News

Departmental Spotlight: Amber Griffin-Royal

April 1, 2025
Endria Richardson

This month's departmental spotlight by Endria Richardson features graduating senior and Clark Scholar Amber Griffin-Royal.

Tell me about your work. What do you care about in the world, and how did you come to care about it?

I’m a third-generation Oakland native and an award-winning DJ/performing artist, and I often find myself reminiscing with friends and family about how Oakland used to sound—and dreaming about what the future might hold. DJing has become my way of making sense of what’s happening to...

Departmental Spotlight: Henry Washington Jr.

March 5, 2025
Endria Richardson

Our March 2025 Departmental Spotlight features Assistant Professor Henry Washington Jr., interviewed by Graduate Student Endria Richardson.

Tell me about your work. What do you care about in the world, and how did you come to care about it?

My work is broadly concerned with the centrality of cultural representation to the logic of antiblackness and, in turn, to black people’s efforts to contend with the antiblackness of the world. I was initially politicized by the state-sanctioned murders of Trayvon...

Department Spotlight: Karina Karbo-Wright

January 27, 2025
Endria Richardson

AAS is launching a new section of our newsletter, Departmental Spotlights, organized by Graduate Student Endria Richardson. Our first spotlight features an interview with graduate student Karina Karbo-Wright.

Tell me about your work (whatever “work” means to you). What do you care about in the world, and how did you come to care about it?

My research interest is in Black film - specifically this intersection of horror and trauma that Black creatives and spectators consume from. Exploring these articulations gives deeper...

Department Spotlight: Karina Karbo-Wright

AAS is launching a new section of our newsletter, Departmental Spotlights, organized by Graduate Student Endria Richardson. Our first spotlight features an interview with graduate student Karina Karbo-Wright.

Tell me about your work (whatever “work” means to you). What do you care about in the world, and how did you come to care about it?

My research interest is in Black film - specifically this intersection of horror and trauma that Black creatives and spectators consume from. Exploring these articulations gives...

Creating a Refuge for Banned Scholars

March 27, 2024
Barbara Montano
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...

Places and Spaces: Michael Cohen & Barbara Montano

April 7, 2024
Barbara Montano

Michael Cohen & Barbara Montano

Berkeley Talks: Reconsidering Black America's Relationship to the Plantation

June 28, 2024
Barbara Montano

Follow Berkeley Talks, a Berkeley News podcast that features lectures and conversations at UC Berkeley. See all Berkeley Talks.

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UC Berkeley African American Studies launches Banned Scholars Project with a Mellon Foundation grant

March 27, 2024
Barbara Montano

Michael Cohen & Barbara Montano

UC Berkeley African American Studies launches Banned Scholars Project with a Mellon Foundation grant

From UC Berkeley’s College of Letters & Sciences: By Emily Yang...

Remarks by Lia Bascomb, Celebrating the Life of Robert Allen

October 2, 2024
Lia Bascomb

Robert Lee Allen was lovely to me. He was certainly the calmest revolutionary I ever met. My first association with The Black Scholar was publishing in it, an experience wholly started by Dr. Allen. After a traumatic, but ultimately successful QE experience, it was Robert that helped me find my confidence again. JFinley and I were his GSIs for 5B, and he asked us each to do a guest lecture based on our own work. Then he asked me to review one of his articles. Then he asked that I be invited to participate in the symposium for the 40th anniversary of his Black Awakening in...

Remarks by Janet Carter, Celebrating the Life of Robert Allen

October 2, 2024
Janet Carter

I first met Robert when he was on the Board of the Oakland Men’s Project, a group in Oakland working with men to educate young men and boys about violence against women.

I couldn't believe my eyes, or my heart. Here was this gorgeous, dimpled, well-read, smart, accomplished, empathetic, introspective man with acute intuitive intellect, who was a social justice warrior with a sense of humor and adventure, and one of only a few men in the country dedicating himself to ending violence against women, which was also my job then at Futures without Violence.

One thing led to...