Past Events

October 18, 2013

In the 1920s, Langston Hughes invented a new poetic form, the blues stanza, which enabled him to embody the continuing presence of the black countryside in the modern city. In his 1926 essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” Hughes asserted the importance of creating a distinctively black poetics out of working-class life. The blues—and the blues stanza—were a central part of that project. Both Hughes’s blues poems and the form itself continue to be hugely influential in contemporary African American poetry and poetics. This talk explores that long reach—through a discussion of Natasha Trethewey’s hybrid blues poems, recent…

October 9, 2013

            30 YEARS LATER On October 19, 1983, the 4-year-old Grenadian revolution, the only Black revolution in the English speaking Western world, was effectively halted by an internal coup followed six days later by an American military invasion.The United Nations General Assembly condemned the invasion. The ostensible reason for the incursion carried out under President Ronald Reagan, was to stabilize the country and save American students studying at an American offshore medical school in Grenada. The Reagan administration had been hostile to the revolution from its inception. Reagan’s expressed fear was that Cuba (helping Grenada build…

October 9, 2013

The VèVè Clark Institute for Engaged Scholars in African American Studies will hold a recruiting event on Thursday, October 24 from 4-6pm in Barrows 652. We hope to bring in freshman and sophomore majors or intended majors to enjoy a lovely dinner and hear from our current scholars and faculty mentors about the benefits and rewards of becoming involved.

April 30, 2013

BLACK FOLK HERE AND THERE: EXPLORING THE LIFE & HISTORY OF THEN & NOW

March 12, 2013

Film - Documentary | March 14 | 6-8 p.m. | Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall (CITRIS) Sponsors: English Department, African American Studies Department, Geography Department, Townsend Center Panelists: Deborah Thomas (film director; Anthropology, UPenn); Nadia Ellis (English, Berkeley); Joshua Jelly Schapiro (Geography, Berkeley); Donald Moore (Anthropology, Berkeley) In 2011 renowned anthropologist and African Diaspora scholar Deborah Thomas co-directed Bad Friday, a film documenting a largely forgotten event in modern Jamaican history and the development of Rastafari culture. During the so-called Coral Gardens “incident” in 1963, Jamaica’s newly independent government rounded up, jailed, and tortured a large group of Rastafarians. Thomas…

March 5, 2013

The Department of African American Studies presents a talk by visiting scholar   Heike Raphael-Hernandez University of Maryland University College, Europe / University of Potsdam, Germany    "Literate Agency: Black Caribbean Empowerment & 18th c. Moravian Church Mission Documents"   Discussant: Professor Ugo Nwokeji, Department of African American Studies Abstract: A letter written in 1739 to the Danish king, Christian VI., by enslaved Afro-Caribbean Moravians, in which they protest plantation owners’ continued harassment and mistreatment of their missionary work among fellow slaves… Interviews about their former daily lives back in Africa before their captivity… Letters of encouragement and greetings to…

February 14, 2013

Keynote speaker:  Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins Chief Executive Officer of Green For All   The theme for this year's graduation is: Proclaiming our Freedom: Paving the Way for a Better Black America. Student Speaker auditions begin Friday, May 10, 2013, 10:30–12:00pm 652 Barrows Hall For more information visit the Black Graduation page

February 13, 2013

The schedule for the talks is below: * February 5 - Jordan Camp * February 12 - Simone Browne * February 19 - Nikki Jones * February 26 - Joao Vargas The topics are: Jordan Camp - Interpreting the Crisis: Race,Housing, and the Carceral Turn in Los Angeles Simone Browne - B(R)anding Blackness: BiometricTechnology and the Surveillance of Blackness Nikki Jones - "The camera rolls": What VideoRecords Can Teach Us About Routine EncountersBetween Young Black Men and the Police Joao Vargas - "War Theater: Police Operations and Sport Mega Events in Rio de Janeiro

October 10, 2012

H. Samy Alim, Associate Professor in the Social Sciences, Humanities, and Interdisciplinary Policy Studies in Education (SHIPS) and Educational Linguistics, Stanford University Barack Obama is widely considered one of the most powerful and charismatic speakers of our age. Without missing a beat, he often moves between Washington insider talk and culturally Black ways of speaking--as shown in a famous YouTube clip, where Obama declined the change offered to him by a Black cashier in a Washington, D.C. restaurant with the phrase, "Nah, we straight." Articulate While Black addresses language and racial politics in the U.S. through an insightful examination of…