Graduate Conference in Dutch Studies
December 2, 2014
Identities in the Making: Dutch Colonialisms and Postcolonial Presents
#HowMediaWritesBlackWomen: Reality TV vs. the Writer as Innovator
November 16, 2014
Aya de Leon says the persistent reality television trend limits representation and opportunities for Black women...
Remaking the UNIVERSITY
October 9, 2014
Bryant Terry AfroVegan
April 21, 2014
Soul Food, Politics, and Public Health
A talk, demo and book signing with master chefs Bryant Terry and Njathi Wa Kabui.
Bryant Terry is renowned for his activism for a healthy, just, and sustainable food system. Alice Waters says, ‘Bryant Terry knows that good food should be an everyday right and not a privilege.’
Chef Kabui is a food activist and anthropologist based in Durham, N.C. Born into a family of Kenyan coffee farmers, Kabui is dedicated to eradicating ‘food deserts.’
Gerald Horne visits to discuss his newest books…
April 17, 2014
GERALD HORNE, Ph.D., J.D., will be discussing his newest books, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance (NYU Press) and the Origins of the United States of America and Black Revolutionary: William Patterson and the Globalization of the African American Freedom Struggle (Illinois Press).
Liberating Dreams Symposium
April 14, 2014
On Saturday, May 3rd, 2014, the Department of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley is excited to host a symposium exploring how we begin to Liberate Our Dreams. Our guiding questions for the day are what does it mean to liberate our dreams and how do we begin? Nikky Finney, John H. Bennett, Jr. Chair of Southern Literature & Creative Writing, English & African American Studies, University of South Carolina will bring our keynote address. Interactive workshops designed to help symposium participants access their creative selves will also be featured. This gathering is in an effort to reintroduce hope, beauty, and love into our lives and communities. We invite you to come and dream with us.
22nd Annual St. Clair Drake Research Symposium
March 31, 2014
St. Clair Drake Research Lecture featuring Saidiya Hartman
March 31, 2014
The Iconic Ghetto: A Reference Point for the New American Color Line
February 22, 2014
Professor Elijah Anderson
William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Sociology, Yale University
The black ghetto has become a major icon in American society and culture, and as such, it has also become an important source of stereotype, prejudice, and discrimination. From the days of slavery through the Civil Rights period, black people have occupied a caste-like status in American society. Today, despite the progressive changes wrought by the racial incorporation process of the 1960s and 1970s, the color line persists—albeit in a new, emergent form—in everyday life. Many blacks now reside in exclusive neighborhoods formerly off-limits to them, and their children attend formerly white schools. These black people work in a wider range of occupations than ever—not simply in menial positions, but in professional positions in which black people have rarely appeared before, including as doctors, lawyers, professors, corporate executives, and major elected officials. But as black people have become increasingly more visible throughout society, dilemmas and contradictions of status have also become more common. The institutional black ghetto is persistent, and it conditions many Americans to think that the black person’s “place” is most often in the ghetto, not in middle-class society. Thus, whites and others often associate black individuals with the iconic ghetto, burdening them with a deficit of credibility that on occasion manifests in acts of acute disrespect reminiscent of America’s racial past. Among themselves black people call such incidents “nigger moments,” and generally interpret them as deeply racist attempts to put them back in their place. These moments of acute disrespect based on race and the black ghetto as a concrete point of reference constitute the present-day American color line.
Elijah Anderson is the William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Sociology at Yale University. Professor Anderson is one of the leading urban ethnographers in the United States. His award-winning publications include Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City (1999), Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community (1990) and A Place on the Corner (1978; 2nd ed., 2003). His most recent publication, The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life, was published by WW Norton in 2012. Professor Anderson is the 2013 recipient of the prestigious Cox-Johnson-Frazier Award of the American Sociological Association. For more on Professor Anderson go to elijahanderson.com.
Radian Child Film Screening
February 4, 2014
In honor of African American History Month, The Department of African American Studies is co-sponsoring a film and panel discussion on the life of Jean-Michel Basquiat at BAM/PFA this Friday February 7th. Please join us and please spread the word!
2014 U.C. Berkeley Renaissance Gala
January 25, 2014
Saturday, February 22, 2014 — 6-9pm Memorial Stadium - Field Club U.C. Berkeley Campus Berkeley, CA For sponsorship/event information contact kihana@berkeley.edu - (415) 967-1537
Black Graduation 2014
January 21, 2014
This year’s keynote speaker is Bryant Terry…
Bryant Terry is a chef, food justice activist, and author of four books, including the critically acclaimed Vegan Soul Kitchen. His fourth book, Afro-Vegan, will be published by Ten Speed Press on April 8, 2014. He is also the host of Urban Organic, a multi-episode web series that he co-created. His interest in cooking, farming, and community health can be traced back to his childhood in Memphis, Tennessee, where his grandparents inspired him to grow, prepare, and appreciate good food. Bryant’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Food and Wine, Gourmet, Sunset, O: The Oprah Magazine, Essence, Yoga Journal, and Vegetarian Times among many other publications.