Juno Award-winning Afro-Cuban group Okan, led by singer-songwriters Elizabeth Rodriguez on violin and Magdelys Savigne on percussion, will perform at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center on Thursday, February 20 at 8pm.
Learn more and buy tickets here
Thursday, February 20, 2025 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
St Mary’s Hall, Multipurpose Room
Join us in St. Mary's Hall for a multicultural evening of poetry and storytelling from cultures of the Black Diaspora from around the world. All are welcome to come and share a poem, story, text or other creative work by authors of the diaspora, in English or another language.
Join us for a lecture by scholar and writer Dr. Nikki Greene as she discusses her recent book, "Grime, Glitter, and Glass: The Body and the Sonic in Contemporary Black Art" which examines how contemporary Black visual artists use sonic elements to refigure the formal and philosophical developments of Black art and culture.
A tea will be hosted at 4 PM, and the lecture will start at 5 PM in the gallery.
In a world where the concept of “race” continues to permeate our societies and shape our perceptions, the need for a radical shift in our approach to combating racism has never been more evident. The “Abolishing Racism: Creating a Future without Race” conference is a groundbreaking event that brings together a diverse range of speakers, scholars, artists, and activists who advocate for racial eliminativism — the bold belief that to truly end racism, we must dismantle the very notion of “race” itself.
This BlaQ History Month, join the LGBTQ+ Equity Center for a book talk with Saeed Jones on Wednesday, February 19th, from 5:00-6:15pm in the Ulrich Theater in Tawes Hall. Jones is a black queer author whose award winning novel, How We Fight for Our Lives, is a coming of age story that centers a young black man who navigates growing up in the Southern United States.
Friday, February 14, 2025 12:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Parren J. Mitchell Art/Sociology Building, 4213A Michelle Smith Collaboratory for Visual Culture
One of this nation's great thinkers and speakers, Frederick Douglass was enslaved from birth on the eastern shore of Maryland, After self-emancipation, he became a leader of abolitionists and an advisor to President Abraham Lincoln. Douglass never knew his birthday, so he chose as his birthday the day of love, Valentine's Day, February 14th.
This Valentine's Day, Friday, February 14th, join members of the campus community and beyond in the Collaboratory as we celebrate Douglass Day with a transcribe-a-thon featuring the African American Perspectives Collection at the Library of Congress. There will be all sorts of goodies, including a birthday cake to celebrate Frederick Douglass's birthday, and we'll connect to the larger community of fellow transcribers across the nation.
Thursday, February 13, 2025 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm
St Mary’s Hall, Multipurpose Room
Join us in the Multipurpose Room on the ground floor of St. Mary's Hall for a talk and Q&A discussion with UMD Professor Rachel Schine (SLLC-Arabic, History) about her new book in honor of Black History Month. Professor Schine's book, "Black Knights: Arabic Epic and the Making of Medieval Race," was published in 2024 by the University of Chicago Press.
In "Black Knights" Rachel Schine reveals how the Arabic-speaking world developed a different form of racial knowledge than their European neighbors during the Middle Ages. Unlike in European vernaculars, Arabic-language ideas about ethnic difference emerged from conversations extending beyond the Mediterranean, from the Sahara to the Indian Ocean. In these discourses, Schine argues, racialized blackness became central to ideas about a global, ethnically inclusive Muslim world.
Schine traces the emergence of these new racial logics through popular Islamic epics, drawing on legal, medical, and religious literatures from the period to excavate a diverse and ever-changing conception of blackness and race. The result is a theoretically nuanced case for the existence and malleability of racial logics in premodern Islamic contexts across a variety of social and literary formations.
Celebrate Black History Month by joining UMD Libraries for our annual Black History Month Read-a-thon in McKeldin’s Portico Room. Readers from across the libraries will share excerpts from books that center Black voices, experiences, and imagination. Light refreshments will be offered. This event will also be streamed on the UMD Libraries’ Youtube.
Every February, Black History Month offers us a meaningful opportunity to honor the achievements, resilience, and groundbreaking contributions of African Americans throughout history. Join Ray Van Dyke for an inspiring webinar as we spotlight some of the most notable Black inventors whose innovations have shaped and enriched our world. Discover the remarkable stories behind their inventions and learn how their legacies continue to impact society today.
LIVE SESSION ONLY, RECORDING WILL NOT BE PROVIDED
Tuesday, Feb.11 | 12:00-1:00 PM
Did you know that the first complete opera by a Black American has been hidden in a single manuscript for more than 130 years? Edmond Dédé, a fourth-generation free person of color born in 1827 New Orleans, had an incredibly successful career as a conductor and composer in Bordeaux, France, writing nearly 100 critically and popularly acclaimed works for the French stage. His magnum opus, however–a four act French grand opera on themes from Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves–had yet to receive a premiere at the time of his death and languished, unrecognized, in private collections and libraries for over a century.
Opera Lafayette, with Artistic Director Designate Patrick Dupré Quigley, and in partnership with New Orleans’ OperaCréole’s Givonna Joseph (who will lead the Pre-Show Discussions), have painstakingly transcribed this monumental work and will present the long overdue world premiere of Dédé’s masterpiece, 138 years after its composition.
Friday, February 7, 2025 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Cole Student Activity Building , 1207
Mark your calendar! Join us at The Driskell Center Gallery for the opening of our spring 2025 exhibition, Future Histories: New Acquisitions at The Driskell Center. All Driskell Center events are free and open to the public. RSVPs are appreciated but not required. Light refreshments will be served. There will be brief remarks at 6 p.m. Come and go as you please, make sure to pick up your Black History Month giveaway, and cast your vote for the center's next acquisition!
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Nyumburu Multipurpose Room
This Circle will bring together folx of the African diaspora to uplift Black history while envisioning a future of Black liberation and radical care. Restorative circles derive from Indigenous ancestral wisdom as a means for individual and community healing, and trained facilitators will provide 6-7 questions for small groups to reflect upon and share experiences with one another.
Wednesday, February 5, 2025 5:30 pm - 6:30 pmIn celebration of Black History Month, Dean Stephanie Shonekan invites you to an exclusive conversation with mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves as part of the Spring 2025 ARHU Dean’s Lecture Series. Denyce will share insights from her career, reflecting on her trailblazing journey as a Black woman in opera.
The discussion will explore Denyce’s work as both an artist and advocate, including a focus on The Denyce Graves Foundation, which is dedicated to uplifting and supporting contemporary Black artists while uncovering the rich history of Black artists from the past. This timely conversation will be enriched by Dean Shonekan’s own research, offering a unique perspective on the intersection of culture and performance. An audience Q&A will conclude the dialogue.
Following the lecture, a reception will provide an opportunity to meet Denyce Graves.
This intimate event is limited, so be sure to register early for free admission before seats are filled!
We look forward to welcoming you to an evening celebrating the power of black voices in the arts and the legacy of those who paved the way.
Wednesday, February 5, 2025
4 - 5:20pm
Where is Wakanda? Is it place? An idea? Who is T’Challa? Who are the African heroes when it comes to the conceptualising of African space and cities? Images of future African cities tend to resemble Wakanda, dominated by high-rise glass and steel structures—an aspiration of many cities in emerging African economies. While there is a need to imagine alternatives to current trajectories of development of African cities, it is important to consider images that lead to the creation of inclusive spaces, a scale that is accessible and a relationship with the public realm that is meaningful to the majority of city residents. A personal perspective and an anecdotal narrative (from South Africa, Sudan and Egypt) is combined with reference to some academic texts. The African City is re-imagined as a livable and lovable city. These concepts imply that cities are just, attractive, functional and resonate with many communities over time. In this way, cities become sustainable by accommodating for all people and allowing for diversity, choice and change. The future image of these cities thus also strongly relates to their geographical, social, cultural, economic and historical contexts.
Friday, January 24th • 9:30 AM to 10:45 AM
2130 HJ Patterson Hall, University of Maryland
In “Black English and the Myth of ‘Standard’ English” (related to McWhorter’s talk "Why Most Humans Talk in Two or More Ways"), Eusebia Mont (HESP) will lead this discussion on the complexities of code-switching, inspired by John McWhorter's New York Times columns. We will explore how language shapes identity, social dynamics, and cultural authenticity while challenging the myth of "standard" English.
Join the BSU-UMD Social Justice Alliance, 2nd Lt. Richard Collins Foundation and The Mission Continues, to celebrate Lt. Richard Collins' birthday with a day of service at Strength 2 Love 2 Farm in Baltimore, MD.
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Please join us for a Local Americanists Works-in-Progress event featuring Professor Emeritus David Wyatt, who will share and discuss a chapter from his forthcoming book from LSU Press.
If you are interested in attending, please contact Bob Levine or Edlie Wong.
Abstract:
Soon after he finished writing Invisible Man, in 1951, Ralph Ellison wrote to a friend about "trying to get started on my next novel." He worked on the novel for some forty years but never considered it finished. After Ellison's death, two versions of the novel were put together by editors: Juneteenth appeared in 1999, and Three Days Before the Shooting . . . . in 2010. In "Ralph Ellison's Labor of Love," a chapter from my forthcoming book from LSU Press, I tell the story of Ellison's struggle to publish a second novel and of its strange afterlife.
Language, Power, and Identity: Black Languages as Tools of Liberation and Expression
Join the Department of African American and Africana Studies for their first Brown Bag of the semester. Dr. Beka Guluma will be presenting his preliminary research titled, "The African American Dream? Comparing Black Immigrant and Native-Born Black American Beliefs about Social Mobility"
"Scholars and observers have long noted that Black Americans exhibit a high degree of political unity. Despite great diversity within Black America, Black Americans tend to overwhelmingly back the Democratic Party and show wide support for a host of social programs and policies designed to uplift Black America. But with a large and growing Black immigrant population, the question emerges: is Black political unity waning? In this Brown Bag, I present very preliminary research that seeks to address the question of whether Black immigrants exhibit similar levels of support for the Democratic Party, and for pro-Black social programs and policies as do native-born Black Americans."
Event Date and Time: Wednesday, October 30, 2024 from 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
Location: Hybrid event - 1102 Taliaferro Hall/ Zoom
