News & Events

April 30, 2015

Check out this latest post on the African American Intellectual History Society's blog--an interview with Robeson Taj Frazier on his latest book, THE EAST IS BLACK: COLD WAR CHINA IN THE BLACK RADICAL IMAGINATION.   Dr. Frazier is a graduate alumni of the African Diaspora Studies program, and presently an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. His research explores black political culture and popular culture, globalization and cross-cultural traffic, and African diasporic intellectual history, with a specific focus on the intersections between African American culture and other cultures, especially 20th and 21st…

April 28, 2015

April 18, 2015

The Black Room: Revisiting “Blackness” in the Global 21stCentury presents... “Afromodern versus Post-Black? A Diasporic Historiography for African American Art” Kobena Mercer, Professor in History of Art and African American Studies at Yale University Monday, April 27th 308A Doe Library 4-6pm Lecture Abstract: Scholarship in African American art history has flourished between 2000 and 2015, yet this was also when “post-black” gained currency to suggest race no longer matters in culture and society. Arguing that “Afromodernism,” a term Robert Farris Thompson coined in 1991, offers a more flexible analytical tool for diaspora-based research, this paper argues that conceptual resources for such an…

April 16, 2015

Please join the American Cultures Center as we host  Dr. Rickey Vincent as he discusses his latest book, 'Party Music: The Inside Story of the Black Panthers' Band and How Black Power Transformed Soul Music .' Monday, April 27th 5pm - 7pm 554 Barrows Hall, Barbara Christian Reading Room Introduction by Dr. Waldo E. Martin, Jr. Appetizers will be provided   Chicago Review Press http://tinyurl.com/acpartymusic Party Music is both social movement analysis and radical music history.  Party Music tells the story of The Lumpen, the short lived R&B band comprised of rank-and-file members of the Black Panther Party in 1970.  The interaction of soul music aesthetics and black power…

April 12, 2015

LECTURE | Tell Me More: Scholarly Voices Across the African Diaspora with Dr. Darieck B. Scott April 18, 2015 @ 10:00 am – 12:00 pm Free with MoAD Admission "Black (Super)Power Fantasies: Blade the Vampire Hunter and the Black Male Superhero Figure" In this lecture, Dr. Darieck Scott will discuss the monstrous and the sexual dimensions of black male imagery in superhero comics, focusing on the character “Blade”—also the main character of a trio of Hollywood action movies starring Wesley Snipes. He will discuss how comic book male superheroes’ extreme hyper-masculinity becomes uncomfortably exaggerated when the superhero is a black male,…

March 30, 2015

Black Graduation 2015 will take place on Saturday, May 23, 2015 at 2pm in Zellerbach Hall.  As always, Black Graduation is planned and hosted by the staff and faculty in the Department of African American Studies as the primary graduation ceremony for students earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in African American and African Diaspora Studies. While our first responsibility is to serve our majors, we are happy to open up the ceremony to students graduating from other programs as a service to the broader Cal community. Online registration for Black Graduation this year begins on March 15, register at http://berkeleyblackgrad.wufoo.com/forms/black-graduation-registration/ Online…

March 30, 2015

San Francisco and its environs enjoy a longstanding reputation as a progressive haven within the US, a place associated with gay pride, school desegregation, freedom of speech, hippies, and, now, hipsters attempting to advance human potential and quality of life through technology. But as recent events in the city attest, there’s another San Francisco, one where only 6% of city residents (but 56% of the city’s jail population) are black; a San Francisco built on a legacy of decades of imported racism.

March 12, 2015

Coming this Summer: Intensive Elementary Swahili with Professor David Kyeu Summer Session C: June 22 - Aug 14 MTWTF 5 - 9 pm 54 Barrows Hall 8 Units For more information please contact: kyeu@berkeley.edu  

February 26, 2015

Many Thousands Still Coming: Theorizing Black Diasporic Identities in a Moment of Agency, Diversity & Inclusion Lecture: Date: March 19, 2015 Time: 5:00PM-6:30PM Location: 652 Barrows Book Signing and Reception Time: 7:00PM-8:00PM Location: University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94704 ......... Twenty years ago Paul Gilroy’s landmark book The Black Atlantic encouraged scholars of the African and Black diasporas to imagine Blackness as a unified yet diverse unit, embracing difference even as it moved forward with a singular aim for agency and equality in the world.  Today we enjoy a proliferation of scholarly studies on a broad range of Black and…

February 19, 2015

Charlotte "Mama C" O’Neal and the UAACC United African Alliance Community Center Heal the Community Tour 2015 Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2015 | 2-4 pm Multicultural Community Center Hearst Field Annex - D37, UC Berkeley (Bancroft Way between Bowditch & Telegraph) Program: 2 pm Film Screening of Mama C: Urban Warrior in the African Bush* 3 pm Presentation & Q&A For more information: 510-642-6528 or mcc.community@berkeley.edu Wheelchair accessible. Please call ahead for special needs. Charlotte Hill O’Neal, aka Mama C, is a vocalist, writer, poet and visual artist who has been performing professionally for more than twenty years and exhibiting her art work extensively since 1986. Mama C was born in Kansas…