Lectures and Events
The Africana Studies Program offers lecture and other programming funds. If you’re planning an event, fill out and return the Programming Funds Request Form.
Events
Vassar Randolph Fellow Professor Sa'ed Atshan will moderate this panel with Swarthmore College Professor Tariq al-Jamil and University of Michigan Professor Su'ad Abdul Khabeer on the diverse experiences of Black Americans. They will reflect on questions around race and faith, Blackness, cultural production, political consciousness, and civic engagement among African American Muslims. The panel will be followed by an Iftar and this is open to the entire Vassar community, all are welcome! Please RSVP.
Campus community only, please.
Religion Professor Kirsten Wesselhoeft hosts an event celebrating her new book, "Fraternal Critique: The Politics of Muslim Community in France." She will give a talk and have a question and answer period.
Campus community only, please.
Ryan Jobson, Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The University of Chicago, examines how the rise and fall of the oil industry impacts post-colonial nationalist visions of the future in Trinidad and Tobago. Jobson asks us to consider if there can be a viable political and economic future for Trinidad and Tobago without oil, a question that should be relevant to us all living in a fossil fuel based global economy.
Past Events
Nicole Holliday, Acting Associate Professor of Linguistics at UC Berkeley, will present her latest research on how tone-detection systems and digital voice assistants like Siri and Alexa reinforce linguistic and racial bias.
This event is open to the public.
Elijah Anderson, Sterling Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Yale University and one of the nation’s leading urban ethnographers, discusses his book The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life. Open to the public.
Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, the first researcher to explore the full depths of Audre Lorde’s manuscript archives, will give a talk on her new book, Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde. Open to the public.
A CUNY sociology professor discusses how reentry after release from incarceration is often presented as a story of redemption. Unfortunately, this is not the reality.
By situating racism and capitalism as interlocking systems of dispossession and displacement, University of Toronto Associate Professor of Sociology Prentiss Dantzler brings the “housing question” into perspective as a way to understand broader calls for reparative justice.
Novuyo Tshuma will give a lecture and read excerpts from her novel Digging Stars.
A panel discussion moderated by Dr. Sa’ed Atshan, 2024–2025 Randolph Fellow in Peace, Conflict, and the Middle East, featuring Professors Tagreed Al-Haddad and Candace Lukasik.
Campus community only, please.
A book talk with award-winning Syrian writer Shahla Ujayli and translator Michelle Hartman.
Campus community only, please.
Sociologist and author Jennifer Patrice Sims will discuss common perceptions about racism and describe the types of personal, peer group, and university-level efforts that are needed to reject fallacies and promote critical thinking during college and beyond. This event is open to the public.
A professor-student mixer to learn about Africana Studies courses, network with Africana Studies professors, hear from current students, and to build community.
Campus community only, please. RSVP required.