Thursday, February 10 | 2 pm & 5 pm
Presented by the American & New England Studies Program | American Studies for the Future: Ross Barrett and Alan Braddock
2:00 PM: Seminar with Ross Barrett (BU, History of Art); Alan Braddock (William & Mary) responding. In this seminar, we will discuss a pre-circulated paper by Prof. Barrett entitled “Painting and Property on Prout’s Neck.”
Online: Virtual Registration here.
5:00 PM: Public lecture by Alan Braddock. “Black Landscapes: Artistic Origins of Environmental Justice and Dilemmas of Decolonization.”
Online: Virtual Registration here.
Dr. Ross Barrett is a the director of Undergraduate Studies and Associate Professor in American Art at BU. Dr. Barrett’s research and teaching explore the ways that fine artists navigated the political, economic, and environmental transformations associated with modernization. Dr. Alan Braddock is Ralph H. Wark Associate Professor of Art History & American Studies at the College of William & Mary. Dr.Braddock’s research explores the history of American and global art, ecology, environmental justice, and animal studies.
Co-sponsors: American & New England Studies Program; BU Center for the Humanities; Dean of Arts & Sciences, Associate Dean of Faculty/Humanities; Associate Dean of Diversity & Inclusion; African American Studies Program; Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Department of History; and the Department of English.
See poster here.
Thursday, February 24 | 6:30 pm
Spiritual Madness: Race, Psychiatry, and African American Religions
Speaker: Judith Weisenfeld
This talk explores late nineteenth and early twentieth-century psychiatric theories about race, religion, and the “normal mind” and shows how the emerging specialty of psychiatry drew on works from history of religions to make racialized claims about African Americans’ “traits of character, habit, and behavior.”
Dr. Judith Weisenfeld is a Agate Brown & George L. Collard Professor of Religion and Chair of the Department of Religion at Princeton University. This talk explores late nineteenth and early twentieth-century psychiatric theories about race, religion, and the “normal mind” and shows how the emerging specialty of psychiatry drew on works from history of religions to make racialized claims about African Americans’ “traits of character, habit, and behavior.”
Location: Rajen Kilachand Center for Integrated Life Science & Engineering, 610 Commonwealth Ave, Room 101
Online: Virtual registration, here.
Co-sponsors: Department of Religion, African American Studies Program
View poster here.
Monday, February 28 | 6 pm
Afrofuturism & Black Life
Speaker: Ytasha Womack, critically acclaimed author, filmmaker, dancer, independent scholar, and champion of humanity and the imagination.
Her book Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci Fi & Fantasy Culture (2013) is the leading primer on the exciting subject which bridges science fiction, futurisms, and culture. The book is a 2014 Locus Awards Non Fiction Finalist. Womack is also a co-curator of Carnegie Hall’s 2022 Festival of Afrofuturism.
Online: Virtual Registration, here.
Co-sponsors: Part of the Writing Black Lives Series sponsored by African American Studies, the BU Center for the Humanities, the Dept of English and Dept of History.
View poster here.
Thursday, March 3 | 2 pm & 5 pm
Presented by the American & New England Studies Program| American Studies for the Future: Paula Austin and Cheryl Hicks
Location: 2:00 PM: HIS110 (226 Bay State Rd, Boston, MA 02215), 5:00 PM: Hillel Center (213 Bay State Rd, Boston, MA 02215), or virtually via Zoom. Register here.
Speakers: Paula Austin (BU, History & Af-Am Studies); Cheryl Hicks (Univ of Delaware)
Dr. Paula Austin is an Assistant Professor of History and African American Studies at BU with a focus on African American history, the history of race and racism, visual culture, urban, education, and women’s history, the history of social science, and the history of childhood. Dr. Cheryl Hicks is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies and History at the University of Delaware. Her research addresses the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, and the law.
Co-sponsors: American & New England Studies Program; BU Center for the Humanities; Dean of Arts & Sciences, Associate Dean of Faculty/Humanities; Associate Dean of Diversity & Inclusion; African American Studies Program; Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Department of History; and the Department of English.
View poster here.
Thursday, March 3, 2022 | 5:30 pm
Cicero with Local Applications: W. E. B. Du Bois’ Views of the Ancient Mediterranean at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Mathias Hanses, Assistant Professor, Department of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies (CAMS), Penn State University
Dr. Hanses project explores W. E. B. Du Bois’s (1868-1963) repeated returns to and shifting views of, the life and works of the ancient Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE). In putting the two thinkers in intertextual conversation, Dr. Hanses hopes to present fresh insights into both of their oeuvres and to elucidate important aspects of how Du Bois activated ancient literature in his life-long fight against White supremacy, anti-Blackness, and other manifestations of racism both personal and systemic.
Location: George Sherman Union Room 239, the Terrace Lounge, or virtually via Zoom. Register here.
Co-sponsors: Classics Department, the Core Curriculum, African American Studies and the NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor
View poster here.
Wednesday, March 16 | 6 pm
Black Futures Film Series: Screening of Brown Girl Begins dir. Sharon Lewis (2017)
Location: COM B05
More information & registration on BU Cinema & Media Studies’ website.
March 17- 18, 2022
Critical University Studies Symposium: Legacies of Slavery and Settler Colonialism
The History Department and African American Studies Program at Boston University are excited to host a two-day symposium that will: reflect on the historical role of U.S. universities in establishing and perpetuating racial inequalities, white supremacy, settler colonialism, and explore approaches for researching, teaching, and addressing past injustices on campuses and in the academy more broadly. More information on BU History’s website.
Call for Papers: Proposals due October 18th, 2021
Speakers include Craig Wilder, Davarian Baldwin, Christine DeLucia, Hilary Green, Leslie Harris, Martha Jones, Ibram Kendi, Noliwe Rooks.
Location: Trustee’s Ballroom, Register here.
Co-sponsors: History Department, African American Studies Program
View poster here.
Wednesday, March 23 | 7 pm
Black Futures Film Series: Screening of Destination Planet Negro dir. Kevin Willmott (2013)
Location: COM B05
More information & registration on BU Cinema & Media Studies’ website.
Wednesday, March 23 | 7 pm
2021 University Lecture Series Speaker : Beneath and Beyond Human: Race and Technology Between Singularities
Louis Chude-Sokei, Professor of English; George and Joyce Wein Chair in African American Studies; Director, African American Studies Program
Established in 1950, the annual lecture provides an opportunity to highlight the work of a distinguished scholar and engage both the University community and the broader public in the vibrant intellectual life of Boston University. Read more on the Provost’s website.
Location: Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Avenue, Register here.
View poster here.
Thursday, March 24 | 5 pm
Early Black Futures: Old Technology, Hopeful Speculation, and Childhood Dreams
Brigitte Fielder, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Open to the BU community & livestreamed to the general public
Both Black literary and emancipation efforts contributed to a project of imagining and producing early Black futures. This talk treats the intertwining of the literary and the technological, exploring Black literature that takes up forms of “old” technology and speculation to consider Black children – as readers and thinkers in the Black future that Black speculation would produce.
Location: Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground, FLR 104. Registration required. Register here.
Co-sponsors: English Department, African American Studies Program, and American and New England Studies Program
View poster here.
Monday, March 28 | 6 pm
Screening Black Futures: A Conversation on Black Cinema Beyond Its Histories
Featuring: Kevin Willmott (writer & director), Stefon Bristol (writer & director), Abimbola Iyun (scholar)
Location: Zoom
More information & registration on BU Cinema & Media Studies’ website.
Wednesday, April 6
BU Giving Day
For seven years, Giving Day has been a truly special occasion, bringing together worthy causes on campus with supportive donors in the larger BU community; a group that last included almost 8,900 individuals in 2021. Join us on April 6, 2022, as the BU community shows the world what we can do when we join together in name of philanthropy and Boston University Pride.
Support the African American Studies Program on Giving Day here.
Thursday, April 21 | 4 pm
Presented by the American & New England Studies Program | American Studies for the Future: André de Quadros
Open to the BU community & livestreamed to the general public
Dr. André de Quadros is a Professor of Music at Boston University. Dr. de Quadros has conducted and undertaken research in over forty countries. Dr. de Quadros’s professional work has taken him to the most diverse settings, spanning professional ensembles, and projects with prisons, peacebuilding and reconciliation, psychosocial rehabilitation, refugees and asylum-seekers, poverty locations, and victims of torture and trauma.
Location: CAS 132 & Reception held outside the Admissions building near the statue of Rett.
Co-sponsors: American & New England Studies Program; BU Center for the Humanities; Dean of Arts & Sciences, Associate Dean of Faculty/Humanities; Associate Dean of Diversity & Inclusion; African American Studies Program; Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Department of History; and the Department of English.
View poster here. More information & registration on AMNESP’s website.
Tuesday, April 26th | 6 pm
Model Minority Masochism: Book Launch & Discussion by Takeo Rivera in Conversation with Carrie Preston
Dr. Takeo Rivera is an Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Drama within the Department of English at Boston University. Dr. Rivera is a specialist in performance studies with a focus on race, sexuality, and gender in U.S. American cultural production. His current project, Model Minority Masochism, under contract with Oxford University Press, is focused on masochism and techno-orientalism in Asian American cultural production across multiple media, including theater, literature, graphic novels, historical archives, and video games.
Location: African American Studies Program, 138 Mountfort Street, Brookline, MA 02446
Join virtually here. The passcode is 126313.
Co-sponsors: BU English and African American Studies Program
View poster here.
May 13-15, 2022
“Then You Don’t Want Me”: Canonizing Gayl Jones – A Virtual Symposium
Organized by Ianna Hawkins Owen (Boston University), Kianna Middleton (UC San Diego), Tala Khanmalek (CSU Fullerton)
This symposium seeks to expand the ongoing conversation regarding Gayl Jones’ work and to facilitate interdisciplinary communion with her archive. Centrally, this symposium asks: what trouble does Jones produce for the canon of Black feminist literature? Of course, “canon” is a formation that straddles intentional and de facto boundaries. As such, we also come at the concerns of canonicity from the vantage point of keywords (for example “blackness” or “woman”) in order to ask, How does Jones rework, shape, or undo some of the central terms of African Diaspora Studies and Ethnic Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Disability Studies, and beyond?
Co-sponsors: Boston University Center for the Humanities, BU Office of CAS Associate Dean for Diversity & Inclusion, BU Learn More Series AY 21-22, BU African American Studies, BU American and New England Studies, BU Center for Latin American Studies, BU English, BU Howard Thurman Center, BU Libraries: Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, BU Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, CSUF Dept. of American Studies, CSUF Dept. of Chicana and Chicano Studies, CSUF Dept. of English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics, CSUF Dept. of Liberal Studies, CSUF Dept. of Women and Gender Studies, CSUF Pollak Library, UCSD Ethnic Studies, UCSD African American Studies
Online: Virtual registration here.
View symposium schedule poster here.
