Queerness in Haitian Vodou
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.
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.
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.
In collaboration with SEE, MICA will be screening the movie The Color Purple in the STAMP Student Union's Hoff Theater at 6:00PM
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.
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 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.
AGNR is pleased to announce the next installment of MomentUMD Live: AGNR Conversations Around Grand Challenges, featuring Eric Reson, Chief Programmes Officer with the Maasai Mara Wildlife Conservancies Association. 
A tap dance and live music company that blurs the line between concert dance and music performance, Music From The Sole celebrates tap's roots in the African diaspora, particularly its connections to Afro-Brazilian dance and music and its lineage to forms like house dance and passinho (Brazilian funk). The New Yorker notes that the group’s “dancers, whose bodies also provide percussion, are in a constant give-and-take with musicians on piano, sax and bass. The feeling is that of being at a family reunion, in which every family member has something to say.”
Just go away – and study abroad!
The four powerful Black women that form the beating heart of Jessica L. Hagan’s knowingly sharp and riotously funny choreopoem Queens of Sheba demand respect and, with every story told, they earn it. A spiritual successor to Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, Queens incisively calls out and lances the constellation of racist, sexist and colorist micro- and macro-aggressions that its characters encounter: the music and the misogyny, the dancing and the drinking, the women and, of course, the (white) men. Turned away from a nightclub for being “too Black”, the Queens navigate the minefields of misogynoir, seeking power among the songs of Tina Turner and Diana Ross and Aretha Franklin, finding elevation in sisterhood, sweet relief in the riot of laughter and the shedding of tears. Playful, intellectually rigorous, packed with righteous fury and genuine soul, Queens of Sheba is a unique meditation on Black Women’s identity, suffering and joy.
El Laberinto del Coco is an Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba Fusion ensemble founded by visionary percussionist Hector “Coco” Barez in 2017. With a unique blend of sizzling musical ideas, Barez presents new ways to the traditional sounds of Puerto Rican Bomba. After touring the world with Ballet Folklorico de Puerto Rico “Areyto,” Grammy Award-winning groups like Calle 13, Bacilos and world-renowned bands like Bio Ritmo, Miramar, William Cepeda and Bayanga, Barez decides to embark on a new journey.
As we honor the incredible legacy of Black history, we also look ahead with boundless optimism and imagination. AfroFutures invites us to explore the limitless possibilities of tomorrow while celebrating the resilience, creativity, and vision of the Black community. Throughout the month of February, join us for a series of events, discussions and activities that envision and empower AfroFuturism in all its forms. From film screenings to critical conversations and Black Prom, we're charting a course toward a future where Black voices, stories and dreams shape the world.
A multimedia performance installation about “human value,” Food for the Gods is a three-part expression of rage and indifference. Inspired by the killings of Black men, this work uses object and puppet performance to explore dehumanization, light, invisibility and well…the magical-less-ness of it all.