Archive: Barbara Montano

July 25, 2024

A Tribute to Journalist, Scholar and Selfless Civil Rights Activist, Dr. Robert L. Allen – May 29, 1942-July 10, 2024 By Daphne Muse “A North Star for how I make my way through the world” – Former student and Co-founder of Art Aids Art, Dorothy Yumi Garcia (Mills College, 1979). After decades of appeals for official pardons to exonerate the 50 Black sailors charged with the 1944 mutiny at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine on the shores of Suisan Bay in Port Chicago, Contra Costa County, Northern California, the long-overdue official exoneration of 256 Black sailors was issued by Secretary…

June 28, 2024

From UC Berkeley Public Affairs:  Berkeley Talks: Reconsidering Black America’s relationship to the plantation By Public Affairs June 28, 2024 Follow Berkeley Talks, a Berkeley News podcast that features lectures and conversations at UC Berkeley. See all Berkeley Talks.   Alisha Gaines, a professor of English at Florida State University, gave a talk, “Children of the Plantationocene,” at UC Berkeley in April. Gaines is the first scholar-in-residence of Berkeley’s Banned Book Project.Courtesy of Alisha Gaines In Berkeley Talks episode 203, Alisha Gaines, a professor of English and an affiliate faculty member in African American studies at Florida State University, discusses why it’s important for Black America to “excavate and reconsider”…

June 28, 2024

May 13, 2024

From the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes:  Thank you for joining these events, and recordings are now available for the two events featuring the Public Humanities Journal and the Black Studies Collaboratory. The CHCI Public Humanities Network will host three virtual events prior to the 2024 Annual Meeting. Please join, whether or not you are registered for the Annual Meeting itself. Monday, May 13, 11 am PDT/2 pm EDT: Conversation with editors-in-chief Jeff Wilson and Zoe Bulaitis about the new journal, Public Humanities (Recording, Youtube) Tuesday, May 14, 11 am PDT/2 pm EDT: Conversation with Barbara Montano and Tianna Paschel about…

May 1, 2024

From the Berkeley Collegium:  The Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Education was established by the Berkeley Collegium in 2014 to recognize an existing program, initiative, or unit that has exceptional promise or a track record of success in promoting undergraduate education at Berkeley. The award is intended to recognize the aims or accomplishments of the program, initiative, or unit, as well as to provide funding for continuing or expanding its efforts. Award Recipients Year Recipient 2024 VèVè Clark Institute for Engaged Scholars of African Studies

April 7, 2024

April 1, 2024

The Department of African American Studies was awarded a mini-grant from the “Addressing bias and bigotry” mini-grant program from the Chancellor’s Office for a project created by graduate student Jasmine Flowers.  From UC Berkeley  The UC Office of the President is providing one-time resources to UC campuses to address and combat antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of bias, bigotry and discrimination at the university. Seventy-two proposals were received from 57 different units on campus that addressed these timely and critical issues facing our campus; 17 are being funded, in addition to a mini-grant program that will fund over 13 additional…

March 27, 2024

From the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation: By Anthony Balas March 26, 2024 The University of California, Berkeley, is making a hopeful case for African American studies amid attacks on academic freedom.  Critical as they are to a healthy democracy, open conversations at public universities on race, history, and freedom are increasingly threatened by an array of attacks—from cuts to funding for humanities departments to legislation that restricts higher education institutions from incorporating topics like racial injustice into curricula.  To Nikki Jones, who is a professor and chair of the Department of African American Studies at UC Berkeley, these attacks can be understood,…

March 27, 2024

From UC Berkeley’s College of Letters & Sciences:    By Emily Yang   March 27, 2024   UC Berkeley’s African American Studies (AAS) Department launched a groundbreaking project this week with a $100,000 Affirming Multivocal Humanities grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Banned Scholars Project is a direct response to increasing restrictions on academic freedom, particularly in the fields of critical race theory, DEI and gender studies. It was spearheaded by AAS professors Michael M. Cohen, Tianna S. Paschel and Ula Taylor; department chair Nikki Jones; and managed by staffer Barbara Montano. The Mellon Foundation, known for its…

March 14, 2024

From The American Academy in Berlin:  Anna-Maria Kellen Lecture Black Habits of Photography How have Black artists, activists, and everyday practitioners used photography to situate themselves in a world structured by anti-Blackness? Such efforts are not simply about creating a comforting self-image that contrasts to the violent colonial uses of photography; they are also about examining the ways photography can serve as a pedagogical tool for knowing oneself and imagining new modes of being in the world. In this talk, Leigh Raiford considers a range of Black archives to illuminate the photographic object as a site for negotiating ideas of…