Past Events

Arabic | College of Arts and Humanities | School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
Tuesday, May 5, 2026 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm  
St. Mary's Hall, St. Mary's Multipurpose Room

The Arabic Program and the Language House at the University of Maryland, College Park, are delighted to invite you to a celebration of Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato, the award-winning new book by Dr. Anny Gaul, Assistant Professor of Arabic Studies at UMD. Winner of the Best Culinary History Book at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2025 and shortlisted for the Nach Waxman Prize for Food & Drink Scholarship, Nile Nightshade traces how the tomato — a fruit indigenous to the Americas — became Egypt's top horticultural crop and an emblem of national identity.

Nile Nightshade has been celebrated in the Wall Street Journal, the Times Literary Supplement, Foreign Policy, Al-Masry Al-Youm, and beyond. Alicia Kennedy, food writer and author of No Meat Required and On Eating, calls it "a master class in food history — deftly and accessibly navigating a complex political, culinary, and linguistic story through a now-common vegetable."

Learn more here.

Arts for All | Language House | School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
Monday, May 4, 2026 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm  0107 St. Mary’s Hall, International Film Lounge

Join us for an international movie night at the Language House! The students of the Arabic cluster will be showing "Assal Eswed" on May 4 at 6pm in 0107 St. Mary's Hall, in Arabic with English subtitles. After spending 20 years in the United States, Masry returns to Egypt with a romanticized image of his homeland. However, he quickly encounters the everyday realities that challenge his expectations. Through humorous and heartfelt moments, Assal Eswed explores themes of identity, belonging, cultural perception, and what it truly means to call a place “home.” The film offers a light yet meaningful reflection on navigating between two worlds. All are welcome!

Learn more here.

Serena Dokuaa Oduro is a poet and AI policy expert focused on using both mediums to empower the public.

Serena Dokuaa Oduro is a poet and AI policy expert focused on using both mediums to empower the public. Her poetry can be found in the book Fake AI by Meatspace Press and in No, Dear Mag, where she guest edited the November 2024 issue “Artifice”. She is a Ragdale HUMAN Residency Fellow and was a 2025 DISCO research network affiliate, both in support of her developing collection, To AI a Butterfly, which uses poetry to dig beneath the language of policy, computer science, and journalism to reveal the ideological and spiritual reckonings needed to build a just AI ecosystem. Serena is the Policy Manager at Data & Society Research Institute, where she leads the organization’s state-level policy engagement. Serena has given multiple presentations and talks about her policy and independent work on AI and Black feminism, including at ACM FAccT, Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, UC Berkeley, Africa Law Tech Festival, and Credo AI’s Responsible AI Summit, where she was featured in their AI-conic Minds series. Her work has appeared in academic journals and news media, including Internet Policy Review, Cell Press' Patterns, and Politico.

1. April 29, 2026
Workshop: The Academy is Political: How Researchers Can Engage with Policy 10:00 am - 12:00 pm (BCaT Lab)

2. April 30, 2026
Lunch & Learn "What Use is an Algorithm to Lady Liberty?" A Luncheon on How the Creative Arts Can Empower Researchers" 12:00 - 1:30 PM

Optional Dinner 6:00 pm (BCaT Lab)

3. May 1, 2026

Book Read 1:00 PM (BCaT Lab)

Reception 2:00 - 3:00 PM
Serena Dokuaa Oduro will read from her in-development poetry collection, To AI a Butterfly. To AI, a Butterfly uses poetry to dig beneath the language of policy, computer science, and journalism, revealing the ideological and spiritual reckonings needed to build a just AI ecosystem and world.

Learn more and register here.

Art | Art History and Archaeology | Arts for All | College of Arts and Humanities | College Park Scholars-Arts
Thursday, April 23, 2026 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm  
Parren J. Mitchell Art/Sociology Building, 3302

Danielle Scott is a multidisciplinary artist whose work resurrects ancestral truths, honors Black identity, and confronts the systems that continue to shape our collective memory. Through collage, assemblage, sculpture, and installation, she layers archival photographs, natural materials, textiles, and found objects as an act of reclamation—transforming what has been discarded into monuments of presence, dignity, and resistance.

Learn more here.

Join us for a symposium on Black Theatre and Dance where artists, scholars, students, and community members gather to share in the vitality of Black performance traditions. Through dynamic performances and thoughtful conversations, we will explore the richness of Black storytelling across the diaspora. Come witness the power of community and celebrate how we sustain one another through creativity, dialogue, and shared purpose.

Learn more and register here.

In Heavyweight, Jordana Moore Saggese examines images of Black heavyweight boxers to map the visual terrain of racist ideology in the United States, paying particular attention to the intersecting discourses of Blackness, masculinity, and sport. Looking closely at the “shadow archive” of portrayals across fine art, vernacular imagery, and public media at the turn of the twentieth century, she demonstrates how the images of boxers reveal the racist stereotypes implicit in them, many of which continue to structure ideas of Black men today. With a focus on both anonymous fighters and notorious champions, including Jack Johnson, Saggese contends that popular images of these men provided white spectators a way to render themselves experts on Blackness and Black masculinity. These images became the blueprint for white conceptions of the Black male body—existing between fear and fantasy, simultaneously an object of desire and an instrument of violence. Reframing boxing as yet another way whiteness establishes the violent mythology of its supremacy, Saggese highlights the role of imagery in normalizing a culture of anti-Blackness.

Learn more and register here.

Join us for a dynamic conversation exploring the history and legacy of school desegregation in Prince George's County.

Featured author, Deirdre Mayer Dougherty, will set the stage, sharing insights from her book Race and Place: School Desegregation in Prince George's County, Maryland which traces the everyday experiences of community members throughout the process of school desegregation and how race, place, and truth came to matter in this process from 1945 through 1973.

Following her presentation, we welcome special guests Alvin Thornton, former four-term chair of the Prince George's County Board of Education, Kimberly A. Griffin, Dean of the College of Education at UMD, and Shawn Joseph, Interim Superintendent of PGCPS, as they reflect on the lessons of desegregation and the ongoing work toward equitable schools today.

Free RSVP includes entry into the event and a light reception.

Learn more and RSVP here.

Our 2026 SJA symposium theme is Freedom Dreams and Radical Joy: Youth Voices in the Pursuit of a Just Society. The symposium will be held on April 10, 2026 at The University of Maryland College Park. 

Date: Friday, April 10, 2026
Time: 11:00AM - 1:00PM
Location: University of Maryland, Riggs Alumni Center, 7801 Alumni Dr, College Park, MD 20742

This year’s symposium continues to honor the life and legacy of Lt. Richard W. Collins III and will center the voices, visions, and leadership of individuals who are reimagining justice through creativity, resistance, and collective joy. This gathering calls us to center joy, mental health, and persistence as acts of resistance and renewal. Together, we will explore how radical hope and youth-led movements are shaping a more just, compassionate, and liberated future.

The BSU-UMD Social Justice Alliance annual symposium will bring together change makers, scholars, and community leaders to explore ways we can build community and collective action for the days, weeks and months ahead and champion the importance of active participation and collective resistance in today’s social justice landscape.

Learn more and register here.

Event Date and Time: Wednesday, April 8, 2026 - 12:30 pm - Wednesday, April 8, 2026 - 2:00 pm
Location: Tawes Hall, 2115

The Department of African American and Africana Studies and The John B. Slaughter Endowment Lecture Series with The Center for Literary and Comparative Studies Present Book Discussion with John Drabinski and Michael Sawyer.

Join us for a discussion and celebration marking the recent release of John Drabinski’s three books: Atlantic Theory (Edinburgh), So Unimaginable a Price (Northwestern), and At the Margins of Nihilism (Fordham). Along with a short presentation, Michael Sawyer (University of Pittsburgh) will host a Q&A, exploring key ideas in the three books and how they illuminate themes of history, memory, and culture in the Black Studies tradition.

Learn more here.

Tuesday, March 31 & Wednesday, April 1
H.J. Patterson Hall, rooms 2124 & 2130

Join us for the 3rd Annual UMD ATLAS Conference on March 31 & April 1! This year's conference features DMV-based faculty exploring the theme of “Identity, Belonging, and Postcolonial Politics: Reflections and Futures.”

This free event is open to the public. Refreshments will be available and a buffet style lunch will be served to all registered attendees on April 1. 

Learn more and register here.

College of Arts and Humanities | David C. Driskell Center for the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora
Thursday, March 26, 2026 4:00 pm - 7:00 pm  Cole Student Activities Building

Please join us on Thursday, March 26, for an afternoon and evening of programming celebrating African American art and scholarship. The day will begin at 4 p.m. with an artist talk, "Hither and Yon," by Alison Saar, winner of the High Museum’s 2025 David C. Driskell Prize, who will discuss her practice with members of our community, followed by a tea reception from 5–6 p.m.

The evening program will begin at 6 p.m. with the presentation of the 2026 Porter/Driskell Book Award in African American Art History (winner to be announced shortly), a special documentary preview, and the Driskell Distinguished Lecture, delivered this year by Dr. Cherise Smith, Joseph D. Jamail Chair in African American Studies in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at The University of Texas at Austin.

Free and open to the public. 

Learn more and register here.

Arts for All | College of Arts and Humanities | The Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Thursday, March 12, 2026 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm  Busboys and Poets Hyattsville

About the Event
Join us in honoring the centennial of Langston Hughes’ seminal poetry collection, "The Weary Blues" (1926) through a poetic Nebraska-Baltimore tribute. Hosted by the youngest and first ever African American State Poet of Nebraska Jewel Rodgers, and featuring acclaimed poets, educators and organizers–Noni Williams, Joël Díaz, Lady Brion, Ephraim Nehemiah and Black Chakra. This event will take place at Busboys and Poets (5331 Baltimore Ave, Hyattsville, MD 20781.)

2026 marks 100 years since the publication of Langston Hughes’ seminal poetry collection "The Weary Blues." In celebration of this remarkable volume, Dream Keepers gathers poets from Nebraska and Baltimore to connect Hughes’s legacy with contemporary Black culture. Through this cross-regional exchange, Dream Keepers pays tribute to Hughes’ contributions–as poet, novelist, playwright, essayist, activist–as well as to his deep kinship with the people he wrote for and about.

Learn more and register here.

College of Arts and Humanities | The Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies |
Department of African American and Africana Studies
Tuesday, March 10, 2026 3:30 pm - 5:30 pm  Taliaferro Hall, 1126

Practicing Possibility
In our current time, it is urgent that we not just dream/imagine a different future, but that we also cultivate a practice of collectivity, care, and critique that develops the muscle for world building.

This year the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department’s sixth observance of Harriet Tubman Day, organized in collaboration with the Department of African American and Africana Studies, is also a celebration of the 20th Anniversary of our joint degree program, the Black Women’s Studies Minor.

Learn more and register.

Monday, March 9, 2026 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm | Virtual

In this lecture, Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, Stephanie Shonekan will explore five songs that African American communities consistently cite as sites of worship—songs that function as prayer, testimony, and praise even when they emerge outside formal religious spaces. Drawing from Black sacred and secular traditions, as well as popular music, the talk examines how these songs carry theological meaning through sound, memory, and collective feeling. As part of a larger project on African American love songs, the lecture argues that love—of God, of community, of self—remains a central mode through which African Americans have journeyed through American history.

Learn more and register here.

College of Arts and Humanities
Tuesday, February 24, 2026 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm

ARHU Dean Stephanie Shonekan will discuss her book Sorrow, Tears and Blood at People's Book in Takoma Park. This is an opportunity to learn more about Nigerian musician and activist Fela Kuti and Shonekan's scholarship. Fela Kuti's album Sorrow, Tears and Blood offers a glimpse into the complicated social, cultural and political phenomenon that is Nigeria.

Learn more and RSVP here.

Makaya McCraven is a prolific drummer, composer, producer and trailblazer in the world of new music. McCraven's longtime relationship with the Chicago-based independent record company International Anthem (IA) has helped establish them as one of the industry's most innovative labels. McCraven has released nine full-length recordings as bandleader on IA in the past decade, crafting an important cornerstone for a fresh direction in jazz that more fully incorporates the complex influences of rock, classical, hip-hop, R&B, trance, African traditional and—perhaps most importantly—remix culture. His work as digital artist meshing disparate sounds and impulses inspired We're New Again, an ingenious reimagining of the work of Gil Scott Heron. The New York Times calls McCraven "one of the best arguments for jazz’s vitality... an endlessly compelling drummer, whose interests include the more hypnotic properties of groove." His latest LP, 2022's In These Times, was listed as one of the top ten releases of the year by NPR Music. 2025 marks the expanded re-release of his 2015 debut album on IA, In The Moment, and a continued drive toward the recreation of what contemporary music is forever becoming. Don't miss the opportunity to see that future now, live at The Clarice.

Learn more and buy tickets here.

Join The Driskell Center on February 6th, 2026 for the opening of its spring exhibition, America Will Be! All Driskell Center events are free and open to the public.

On view at The Driskell Center gallery from February 9 through May 8, the exhibition will open with a public reception on February 6, from 5 to 7 p.m.

Learn more here.

Join us as we celebrate Black History Month 2026! The UMD community has curated an engaging and exciting array of programs and events for Black History Month - BHM 2026! Visit this page regularly to stay updated on newly promoted programs.

See the Program and Event Calendar here.