The 2024 Bebe Koch Petrou Displacements Symposium, hosted by the Center for Literary and Comparative Studies in the Department of English, features speakers and workshops focusing on the theme of displacements.
Join us Tuesday March 26 at 12:30pm for WILDWOOD: BlackDH Adventures in Southside Chicago Worldmaking, a lecture featuring Elizabeth Murice Alexander.
From the archive to the screen, Black digital humanists regularly engage hypertext literature and interactive media as tools of social justice-based creative placemaking.
In this presentation, Alexander examines the use of interactive media for Black community worldbuilding and presents her own work in this area. WILDWOOD, a Black solarpunk digital gamebook, visions life in a rewilded future version of West Englewood, a neighborhood on the southside of Chicago. In the game, Alexander incorporates elements of choose-your-own-adventure storytelling and tabletop gaming to explore community histories and futures through adventures in Black speculative worldbuilding, while also experimenting with hypertext fiction and AI image generation as digital placemaking tools. As such, WILDWOOD offers tools to write future visions of Black communities, and space to enact these visions through digital play.
Sociology Table, a graduate student initiative in the Department of Sociology at UMD-College Park, invites you to attend a virtual talk on March 25th, 2 - 3 PM, "Perspectives on Migration, Trauma, Health and Mental Health in Global Contexts".
As part of our series on community-engaged research, we present guest speaker Dr. Lynn Michalopoulos, Associate Professor at the School of Social Work at University of Maryland, Baltimore. Dr. Michalopoulos's research and community engagement focuses around trauma and mental health among labor- and forced-migrant populations in sub-Saharan Africa. Find the meeting link here and if you want to learn more, feel free to send an email to nviswasa@umd.edu.
In his engaging talk, Mr. Carney will delve into the history of resource exploitation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and its impact on the country's ongoing conflicts. He will also explore the role of extractivism in the context of the global green energy transition and highlight the resilience and agency of the Congolese people in their struggle for a liberated Congo and Africa.
As a highly respected expert with an extensive background in political science, research, and civic engagement, Mr. Carney brings a wealth of knowledge and insights to this critical topic. This event is part of the GEOG422/GEOG88A Changing Geographies of Sub-Saharan Africa class and is open to the University of Maryland Community.
We would be delighted to have you join us for this discussion, either in person (refreshments provided) or virtually via Zoom. I've attached a flyer for more information about the event and the speaker.
To receive the Zoom link, you can use this short Zoom registration form, and a calendar invite will be sent to you with the event details and Zoom information.
Each year, on March 10, Harriet Tubman Day, we in The Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies sound the call to gather. This year, our theme, “Harmonies of Liberty,” draws from James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
Lift every voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with harmonies of liberty
To sing no further is to be schooled in a lesson on the importance of joy, community, and care, in the meantime and in-between time—joy as a catalyst for and companion to freedom. To call us together under the idea of “harmonies of liberty” is not an invocation to think the same thing or sing the same note. Time taken to commemorate Harriet Tubman is time spent re-envisioning communities and pathways to justice. We metaphorically draw on Black musical traditions that come alive on the downbeat, subvert the expected meter, and deliberately improvise in order to learn and teach each other how to walk out of time with the world (hostilities) around us. We come together to improvise the solutions we need and find new ways of imagining ourselves.
This year, we think about alternative pathways to justice in conversation with Brooklyn-based artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh. Fazlalizadeh combines visual art and activism as an entry point to consider “how people, particularly women, queer folks, and Black and brown people, experience race and gender within their surrounding environments -- from the sidewalk to retail stores, to the church, to the workplace.” In 2012, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh started her ongoing international series, "Stop Telling Women to Smile." This project serves as a response to street harassment. It consists of a collection of large-scale portraits aiming to reclaim the spaces women and non-binary individuals experience as hostile and unsafe. While the project initially focused on the experiences of harassment that women and non-binary individuals face in the USA, Fazlalizadeh's work has now expanded to other countries, such as Berlin, Canada, France, Mexico, and Trinidad and Tobago, where she collaborates with local communities to rewrite spaces of harm. Fazlalizadeh’s work travels multiple terrains – including the African American Museum of History and Culture, serving as the Public Artist in Residence for the New York City Commission on Human Rights, as well as her artistic collaboration with Spike Lee on his Netflix Series, “She’s Gotta Have It.”
We will be joined by Ms. Ernestine “Tina” Wyatt, who will open the evening’s proceedings by bringing remarks on behalf of the Tubman family. This event begins at 3:00 p.m. in the Edward St. John Teaching and Learning Center, The University of Maryland, College Park, Room 1309, and online. In-person and online registration required. While at UMD, Fazlalizadeh will hold a workshop for student artists and activists, followed by her keynote.
Notes:
Also known as “The Black National Anthem,” the poem/song was written at the turn of the twentieth century (1900) and scored by Weldon Johnson’s brother, John Rosamond Johnson.
Turn the World Upside Down explores how Black writers and performers reimagined folk forms through the lens of the unruly—that which cannot be easily governed, disciplined, or managed. Drawing on a transnational and multilingual archive—from Harlem to Havana, from the Panama Canal Zone to Port-au-Prince—Owens considers the short stories of Eric Walrond and Jean Toomer; the ethnographies of Zora Neale Hurston and Jean Price-Mars; the recited poetry of Langston Hughes, Nicolás Guillén, and Eusebia Cosme; and the essays, dance work, and radio plays of Sylvia Wynter. Owens shows how these figures depict folk culture—and Blackness itself—as a site of disruption, ambiguity, and flux. Their works reveal how Black people contribute to the stirrings of modernity while being excluded from its promises. Ultimately, these works do not seek to render folk culture more knowable or worthy of assimilation, but instead provide new forms of radical world-making.
The Department of American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park is delighted to announce the 2024 Savneet Talwar Lecture, "FULL: A Conversation on Black Girlhood, Fatness, Beauty and Becoming" featuring Dr. Mecca Jamilah Sullivan of Georgetown University and Dr. Psyche Williams-Forson of the University of Maryland.
Dr. Mecca Jamilah Sullivan is an associate professor of English at Georgetown University and author of Big Girl—a novel praised by The New York Times as an "achingly beautiful coming-of-age debut" and by Publisher's Weekly as "a treasure."
Dr. Psyche Williams-Forson is professor and chair of American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park and author of Eating While Black: Food Shaming and Race in America, winner of the James Beard Foundation Award.
The event will take place on Thursday, February 29 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Ulrich Recital Hall in Tawes Hall. All are welcome.
The Black Monologues are designed to give students, staff and faculty an opportunity to share their stories through the performance of spoken word poetry, monologues and poetry reading. The program will give audience members an opportunity to enjoy a night of poetry, community, food and relaxation while also stimulating important dialogue surrounding identity and the Black experience.
Eziaku Nwokocha is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Miami. She is a scholar of Africana religions with expertise in the ethnographic study of Vodou in Haiti and the Haitian diaspora. Her research is grounded in gender and sexuality studies, visual and material culture and Africana Studies. She obtained a Ph.D. with distinction in Africana studies from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master’s degree in Africana studies from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master’s degree in Theological studies from Harvard Divinity School, and a Bachelor’s degree in Black studies and Feminist studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Nwokocha is the author of Vodou en Vogue: Fashioning Black Divinities in Haiti and the United States (University of North Carolina Press, 2023), an ethnographic study of fashion, spirit possession, and gender and sexuality in contemporary Haitian Vodou, exploring Black religious communities through their innovative ceremonial practices. The book is featured within the series Where Religion Lives.
Nwokocha is currently working on her second book project which is tentatively entitled: “‘Tell My Spirit’: Black Queer Women in Haitian Vodou,” which investigates Black queer women’s interactions with Haitian Vodou divinities, their performance of ritual work, and their formation of religious communities in multiple locations including Montréal, Canada; Miami, Florida; Havana, Cuba; Paris, France; Brooklyn, New York, and Northern California. She pays particular attention to spiritual possession, which serves as a site for subversive ritual performances that contest dominant national and regional discourses on sexuality, gender, and race.
College of Education Benjamin Professor Candace Moore presents "Visions of Black Liberation." This webinar highlights the importance of shifting a perspective on equity and inclusion to Black liberation in antiracism work through an international lens. Attendees will have the opportunity to learn about the complexities in implementing antiracism focused curriculum, programs, and services in education (primary, secondary and tertiary education) and the lessons learned in centering Black liberation in antiracist applications.
Conference Program now available here.
The inaugural UMD ATLAS Conference will be held on the UMD campus on Tuesday, February 27, 2024. Join us for engaging panel presentations and discussions highlighting UMD faculty-led research related to Africa, the African diaspora, and African American studies.
Dr. Orisanmi Burton, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at American University and author of Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt, will be our inaugural Keynote Speaker.
The conference will be held at H.J. Patterson, rooms 2124 and 2130, and will also be available via Zoom for online attendees. Online attendees must register to receive a Zoom link.
We ask all conference attendees to register whether they are attending a portion of the event or the full day. The conference is free to attend and open to all. Registration will remain open for all sessions for both in-person and virtual attendees and we will be registering people at the door as well, although lunch space is limited and not guaranteed.
We look forward to seeing you there!
The Frederick Douglass Center for Leadership Through the Humanities and the Department of African American and Africana Studies present a special screening of Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power, a documentary that tells the story of the local movement and young Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizers who fought not just for voting rights, but for Black Power, in Lowndes County, Alabama, a rural, impoverished town with a vicious history of racist terrorism.
The event will include a Q&A with three SNCC veteran organizers (Judy Richardson, Courtland Cox, Jennifer Lawson) and two UMD graduate students (Jessica Rucker from American Studies and Amber Jonson from Education) and is open to the community.
Breakfast will begin at 10 a.m. and lunch will be provided.
In collaboration with SEE, MICA will host a free screening of Jordan Peele's scifi horror film Nope.
Bias Incident Support Services (BISS) and the Nyumburu Cultural Center have partnered to facilitate a restorative circle to honor Black ancestors and current students to build a beautiful Black future. The Circle is a monthly space to ground ourselves in the lived experiences of those impacted by identity-based trauma. All UMD members are welcome to join, acknowledging that we are holding space with vulnerability and humility. Restorative circles derive from Indigenous ancestral wisdom as a means for individual and community healing.
Samuel Riggs IV Alumni Center - Orem Alumni Hall
Join us as we come together to celebrate and honor the richness of Black culture, creativity, and resilience. Honor the past, embrace the present, and envision a future filled with boundless opportunities at the second annual Black Prom: Alien Superstar.
In collaboration with the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs (OVPSA) and the Office of Graduate Diversity and Inclusion (OGDI), the Multicultural Involvement and Community Advocacy Office (MICA) invites you to embrace your individuality, creativity, and uniqueness. Dress to impress in your most AfroFuturistic or celestial attire as you immerse yourself in a captivating atmosphere filled with food, music, dance, and the camaraderie of fellow Terps. Unleash your creativity and embrace the spirit of AfroFutures with your hairstyles as well! Whether you opt for AfroFutures flair or Alien Superstar charm, let your hair be a dazzling celebration of Black excellence and imagination.
Mark your calendars and get ready to shine like the stars you are. This Black History Month, let's make history together at Black Prom: Alien Superstar!
In collaboration with SEE, MICA will be screening the movie The Color Purple in the STAMP Student Union's Hoff Theater at 6:00PM
Douglass Day is an international celebration honoring the life and work of Frederick Douglass and Black History Month, and takes place annually on Douglass' chosen birthday—February 14th. We welcome anyone with an interest in Black history, joy, art, foodways, etc. to join us to transcribe digitized images from Douglass' “General Correspondence, 1841-1912” held at the Library of Congress in DC. The correspondence includes letters from and about Douglass to family members, activists, politicians, and organizations before and after his death in 1895.
Join UMD Libraries for our annual Black History Month Read-a-thon. Readers from across the libraries will gather in McKeldin's Special Events room to share excerpts from books that center Black voices, experiences and imagination.
Join the University Career Center as we host a panel of Black Terp alumni. Panelists will share updates on their various career paths, provide advice to current students, and discuss the experience of being a recent graduate. Attendees will also have the opportunity to ask questions.
Ralph Ellison famously characterized ensemble jazz improvisation as “antagonistic cooperation.” Both collaborative and competitive, musicians play with and against one another to create art and community. In Antagonistic Cooperation, Robert G. O’Meally shows how this idea runs throughout twentieth-century African American culture to provide a new history of Black creativity and aesthetics.
From the collages of Romare Bearden and paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat to the fiction of Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison to the music of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, O’Meally explores how the worlds of African American jazz, art, and literature have informed one another. He argues that these artists drew on the improvisatory nature of jazz and the techniques of collage not as a way to depict a fractured or broken sense of Blackness but rather to see the Black self as beautifully layered and complex. They developed a shared set of methods and motives driven by the belief that art must involve a sense of community. O’Meally’s readings of these artists and their work emphasize how they have not only contributed to understanding of Black history and culture but also provided hope for fulfilling the broken promises of American democracy.
This event will be held in a hybrid format, both in-person and online.
