Past Events

For more than fifty years, the multiple Grammy Award-nominated a cappella women's choir Sweet Honey in the Rock®️ has maintained an active role at the global forefront of Black empowerment, entertainment and education. Founded by the late historian, social activist and singer Bernice Johnson Reagon, the ensemble's concerts offer a positive, loving and socially conscious spirit, held aloft by masterful choral singing. Sweet Honey in the Rock's Celebrating the Holydays is a unique fusion of traditional American holiday spirituals, hymns and inspirational songs that intentionally incorporates holy and celebratory music by cultures and religions from around the world, all blended with thematic elements of hip-hop, folk and pop music. This special presentation of good tidings for the season has been honed to perfection over a decade of touring. You'll hear classics including “Jesus, What a Wonderful Child” and “Silent Night,” alongside popular band favorites like “We Are,” “Let There Be Peace” and “Chinese Proverb.” In an effort toward greater audience inclusivity, Sweet Honey prioritizes ASL interpretation at every performance. Celebrating the Holydays will feature vocalists Louise Robinson, Nitanju Bolade Casel, Aisha Kahlil and Carol Maillard; bassist Romeir Mendez; and American Sign Language interpreter Barbara Hunt.

Learn more and buy tickets here.

Join the BSU-UMD Social Justice Alliance, 2nd Lt. Richard W. Collins III Foundation and the Mission Continues as we honor the life and legacy of Lt. Richard Collins III through a day of service, reflection, and community impact. Volunteers will come together at City Ranch, under the direction of Cowboy Brandt, to build benches, clean up the grounds, and help map out new hiking trails in dedication to this courageous soldier’s memory. Whether you are a student, faculty or staff member, veteran, community member, or supporter, your participation helps ensure that Lt. Collins’ legacy of courage and compassion continues to live on through meaningful action. Let’s serve and build together! 

Learn more here.

Monday, December 1, 2025 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
0107 St. Mary’s Hall, International Film Lounge

As part of the F25 LH International Film Series, the Arabic Cluster presents Empire M(إمبراطورية ميم). Experience Arabic language and culture through cinema and join us for an evening of cross-cultural dialogue and community engagement.

Learn more here.

Arabic | College of Arts and Humanities | Language House | School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
Wednesday, November 19, 2025 6:00 pm - 8:30 pm
HJ Patterson, 3135

One of the classics of Egyptian cinema, Cairo Station is a psychological thriller that’s part neorealist and part film noir set in and around Cairo’s central train station.

The film will be shown with subtitles, and light refreshments will be provided. 

Learn more and RSVP here.

Please join us for a Local Americanists during which Professor Tess Chakkalakal will discuss her recently published book, A Matter of Complexion: The Life & Fictions of Charles W. Chesnutt (St. Martin's Press, 2025).

Learn more and RSVP here.

Nov. 14-Nov. 21, 2025 | The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center 

A biographical tale of country life upended by the Vietnam War, Samm-Art Williams’ Tony Award-winning play follows a young Black farm owner and his indomitable spirit as he leans on faith, love, and the pull of the land in the face of losing everything, including himself.

Assistant Professor KenYatta Rogers (director of previous TDPS productions "Stick Fly," "Men on Boats," and “Metamorphoses") directs this exciting and thought-provoking play offering insight into the rural Black experience about one man’s journey to find fulfillment.

Learn more here.

Thursday, November 13, 2025 4:30 pm - 6:00 pm
Jimenez Hall, 1205

Lecture Title: Childish Bodies: From Invisible Traffick to Visible Debt

Summary: This 30-minute lecture explores the trafficking of Black children into the U.S. South after the Haitian Revolution, raising the question: How could the world’s first Black republic, founded in freedom, see its children sold abroad? Placing Haiti within the framework of “second slavery,” I extend Dale Tomich’s insights on the plantation and global capitalism to the Haitian case. Within a year of independence, French forces in Santo Domingo trafficked free-born Haitian children to the Carolinas in exchange for rice, aided by U.S. neutrality and British blockades. Drawing on Haitian laws, newspapers, runaway ads, and military reports, I argue that Haiti’s struggle against slavery did not end in 1804 but continued into its first decade of independence.

Learn more here.

Monday, November 3, 2025 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Gildenhorn Recital Hall

Sherrilyn Ifill, professor of law and founding director of the 14th Amendment Center for Law and Democracy at Howard University, will deliver a Douglass Center for Leadership Through the Humanities public lecture on the 14th Amendment and the Crises in American Democracy. Professor Ifill's decades-long leadership in centering humanity in the law, combined with UMD’s selection of the Constitution as our First Year Book and the current and ongoing attacks on due process and birthright citizenship makes this an important moment to hear her analysis on this amendment, considered one of the most consequential.

Passed during Reconstruction, the 14th Amendment not only set out to protect the citizenship and rights of formerly enslaved Black people, but it also issued safeguards disqualifying former insurrectionists from running for state and federal office. Professor Ifill will offer analysis on the 14th Amendment in contemporary life and politics with a central focus on the human condition in law and democracy.

Learn more and register here.

Carole "Mawoule"Demesmin discusses her music, artistry, and Vodou practice over authentic Haitian food with Cécile Accilien.
Fanm Dayiti: An Intimate Conversation with Carole Demesmin

Date: October 30th

Time: 5pm - 8pm

Location: St. Mary's Hall - Multipurpose Room

Join us for an intimate conversation over authentic Haitian food with the legendary singer, activist and Vodou priestess Carole "Mawoule" Demesmin. Prepare to be inspired, empowered, and uplifted by Carole's journey and wisdom in this discussion led by Dr. Cécile Accilien. This event offers unique opportunity to connect with a remarkable woman and discover how she has been using her career, voice, artistry, and Vodou practice to preserve Haitian culture and create new narratives surrounding Haiti for over four decades. Delicious authentic (and did we mention free!) Haitian food will be served at this event so MAKE SURE TO RSVP so we can make sure you get a plate. See you there!!

Learn more and RSVP here

Legendary musician, visual artist and Vodou Priestess Carole Demesmin leads a workshop on Vodou and its religious and cultural significance.

Vodou Workshop with Carole Demesmin

Date: October 29th 2025

Time: 12pm - 2pm

Location: St. Mary's Hall - Multipurpose Room

Join legendary musician, artist, and Vodou Priestess Carole Demesmin as she invites us into her spiritual practice through this Vodou Workshop. Learn about Vodou and its religious and cultural significance to Haiti in this hands-on workshop accompanied by delicious, authentic (and did we mention free!) Haitian food! This in-person event will take place in the Multipurpose Room of The Language House (St. Mary's Hall). Don't miss this unique, fun and rare opportunity to discover the true meaning of Vodou and get into the Spooky Season spirit! Make sure to RSVP...if you dare.

Learn more and RSVP here.

Join the Anti-Black Racism Initiative, the Baha'i Chair for World Peace and the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences for a two-day conference on eradicating racism in the DMV.

When:
Thu, Oct 16, 2025 - 6:00PM
to
Fri, Oct 17, 2025 - 4:30PM

Where:
Atrium, Adele H. Stamp Student Union

Host:
ABRI, the Baha'i Chair for World Peace, and BSOS

Learn more and register here.

Choreographer, director and performer Kayla Farrish has become renowned for work that seamlessly incorporates dance, narrative theater, film and sound score in service of transforming invisibilized histories into liberation. Put Away the Fire, Dear is a group dance-theater work unraveling American cinema, in which six marginalized characters defy their inherited roles and reimagine new narratives for themselves. Jumping through portals spanning reality and cinema, they change the lens, uprooting power and their distorted existence. We connect with those of the past like Zora Neale Hurston, Oscar Michaux, Ethel Waters, Bojangles and onwards. This work invites BIPOC audiences to see their worlds reflected and offers collective liberation in dreaming of our unwritten stories. In 100 minutes, this wild dance-theater production breaks down whose imagination we are living in with shifting scenic design by Dyer Rhoads and live music by Alex MacKinnon. Following her recent run at Chelsea Factory NY (2025) and American Dance Festival (2024), Farrish’s company makes its Clarice Presents debut with the D.C. area premiere of this vibrant multimedia performance.

Learn more and buy tickets here.

Five Black DeafBlind actors bring to life the untold stories of DeafBlind enslaved people in a groundbreaking play.

A Touch of Slavery is a radically new kind of theater, performed by DeafBlind actors in Protactile, the language of the DeafBlind community. As a tactile form of communication, Protactile requires a different model of performance. Actors and audience members interact directly. In this production, a collaboration between PT411, Richmond Area Black Deaf Advocates, and TDPS, audiences will experience a moving journey through the lives of nineteenth-century DeafBlind slaves. Knowledge of Protactile or American Sign Language is NOT required for this production. Actors will adapt their performance to fit each person’s needs.

Learn more and buy tickets here.

Sony Ton-Aimé is a Haitian poet, translator and art administrator. His poetry collection Konbit is forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon University Press, (2026). He is the author of the chapbook, LaWomann (2019) and the Haitian Creole translator of Olympic Hero: The Lennox Kilgour's Story.

Learn more here.

Thursday, September 25, 2025 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
Tawes Hall, 2115

Dr. Corrine Collins is an assistant professor of English at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on contemporary African diaspora literature and culture. Her research focuses on representations of interracial intimacy in twentieth and twenty-first century African diaspora literature and popular culture.

In this talk, Collins examines the food and lifestyle content of Nara Aziza Smith and Meghan Markle. Nara Smith rose to fame with ASMR Instagram and TikTok videos of her making food from scratch in haute couture gowns, and Meghan Markle recently returned to the food lifestyle production with her 2025 Netflix show With Love, Meghan. Collins analyzes the ways Smith's and Markle's content intersects with their black multiracial identities to argue that both women emphasize the domestic as a space of interracial healing, peaceful love, and abundance. In doing so, Collins engages with the legacy of "mulatta," and argues that the black multiracial woman has become a figure of racial and domestic (re)productivity in the twenty-first century.

Learn more here.

Collective Imagination: Freedom Dreaming and Liberation

Date and Time: 2:00 pm-3:30 pm September 25, 2025

Location: Samuel Riggs IV Alumni Center, University of Maryland

A reception will follow.

Benjamin's talk, Collective Imagination: Freedom Dreaming and Liberation, will address how science and technology reinforce social inequalities and the vital role of grassroots organizers who boldly imagine more just possibilities.

Learn more and register here.

David C. Driskell Center for the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora
Friday, September 12, 2025 - December 5, 2025

Visit The Driskell Center from September 12 to December 5 for the fall 2025 exhibition, Solace & Sisterhood. The Center is open to the public Monday through Friday, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Featured artists: Lavett Ballard, Amber Robles-Gordon, and Evita Tezeno

Solace & Sisterhood is supported in part by the Maryland State Arts Council, the University of Maryland's Arts for All initiative, and the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS).

Learn more here.

The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Kogod Theatre

ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE
The story of Anansi and his trickster family is put into a sleek hip hop context for Hip Hop Anansi, a modern, all-ages adaptation of a traditional Ashanti folktale. Anansi wants the Golden Fly Pie Award for Tricksterism and is not above outwitting his own family to win it. But his rhyming, break dancing, graffiti-ing children are ready to claim the prize in their own right. Paige Hernandez, Associate Artistic Director of Everyman Theatre in Baltimore, directs this new vision of a classic African folk tale as penned by the acclaimed actress, playwright and singer-songwriter Eisa Davis.

All performances include integrated open captions.

PERFORMANCE DATES
Fri, Apr 18, 2025 • 7:30PM
Sat, Apr 19, 2025 • 1PM & 4PM
Fri, Apr 25, 2025 • 7:30PM
Sat, Apr 26, 2025 • 11AM

Learn more and buy tickets here.

Please join us for a talk by Professor Robin D. G. Kelley of UCLA. This event is part of the Bebe Koch Petrou Lecture Series.

About the Speaker:

Robin D. G. Kelley is Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nahs Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA and a public intellectual whose numerous books include co-edited volumes such as The Other Special Relationship: Race, Rights and Riots in Britain and the United States (2015); Walter Rodney, The Russian Revolution: A View From the Third World ( 2018); as well as monographs, Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (2012); Thelonious Monk (2009); and Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2002).

Learn more here.

Thursday, April 3, 2025 5:00 pm - 7:30 pm
The David C. Driskell Center, 1207

Join us for the David C. Driskell Distinguished Lecture featuring Dr. Kellie Jones as she presents “Suzanne Jackson: Ecologies of Abstraction.” The evening begins with a tea reception at 5 p.m., followed by the announcement of the Book Award at 6 p.m. and the lecture at 6:15 p.m.

This event also marks the kickoff of the 35th Annual James A. Porter Colloquium, organized by Howard University, beginning on April 3.

Learn more and register.