Description/Mission

Students formed the Africana Studies Group (ASG) in the fall of 2000, the goal being to provide an arena for ideas regarding the field and to establish an official concentration in Africana Studies at The Graduate Center. The ASG, by definition, is interdisciplinary and encourages input and participation from students and faculty from the various fields that help comprise Africana Studies. While the ASG periodically elects co-chairs, its structure is loose, based upon the needs of students and the evolving and competing articulations of Africana Studies.

The current co-chairs are Kevin McGruder (History) and Tyler Schmidt (English).

Africana Studies Group Listserv

The Africana Studies Group has a listserv, which serves as a forum for all those interested in the scholarly pursuit of Africana Studies. The listserv will post ASG announcements and events, as well as serve as a space for discussion. To subscribe, contact Lise Esdaile (lesdaile@gc.cuny.edu), providing your name, institutional affiliation, and interest of study.

Concentration in Africana Studies

On May 13, 2004, The Graduate Council of The Graduate Center approved a concentration in Africana Studies for students enrolled in any of The Graduate Center doctoral programs. There is one required course, "Introduction to Africana Studies," which will be offered once a year. Students choose four more Africana Studies-related interdisciplinary courses to receive acknowledgement of a concentration. Students may also take Africana Studies-related courses at New York University and Columbia University to receive credit. The coordinator of the concentration is Robert Reid-Pharr. For more information and concentration enrollment forms, visit the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean (IRADAC) office, Room 7114 at The Graduate Center.

The concentration is the first step. We will continue to work to establish Africana Studies as a certificate program and, eventually, a doctoral program.

Faculty

A list of some of the current faculty at The Graduate Center:

• Ali Jimale Ahmed, Comparative Literature
• Ray Allen, Music
• Martin Antangana, History
• Juan Battle, Sociology
• Stephen Blum, Music
• Laird Bergand, History
• Barbara Bowen, English
• Francesca Canadé Sautman, French
• Jerry Carlson, Film
• Deborah Coates, Social Personality Psychology
• George Corbin, Art History
• Vincent Crapanzano, Anthropology
• William E. Cross, Social Personality Psychology
• James L. de Jongh, English; Director of IRADAC
• Michelle Fine, Social Personality Psychology
• Juan Flores, Sociology
• Frances Fox Piven, Political Science, Sociology
• Barbara L. Hampton, Music
• Ellie Hisama, Music
• Jane Marcus, English
• Leith P. Mullings, Anthropology
• W. Ofuatey-Kodjoe, Political Science
• Robert F. Reid-Pharr, English; Coordinator, Africana Studies Concentration
• Donald Robotham, Anthropology
• Martin Ruck, Developmental Psychology
• Ira Shor, English
• Judith Stein, History
• Jon-Christian Suggs, English; Coordinator, Justice Studies Program at John Jay College
• Neil Tolchin, English
• Margaret Rose Vendyres, Art History
• Michele Wallace, English/Film
• Jerry G. Watts, English
• Barbara Webb, English

Faculty Development Workshops

In 2003, the ASG and IRADAC secured a grant from CUNY's Faculty Development Program for a series of workshops entitled "Africana Studies in the New Millennium," open to anyone teaching Africana Studies-related courses at CUNY. The goal of these workshops was to promote development in the study and teaching of the African Diaspora, encouraging CUNY scholars to create programs reflective of the various discourses that continue to shape the field.

We kicked off the series by co-sponsoring the three-day nationwide conference, "The State of Black Studies." The conference, co-sponsored by the Schomburg Center, Princeton University, and IRADAC, attracted hundreds of scholars from across the country, including Abdul Alkalimat, Cathy Cohen, Anne duCille, Henry Louis Gates, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Valerie Smith, and CUNY Graduate Center alumnus Beth Ritchie.

Colin Palmer, a co-organizer of the Schomburg conference and former Graduate Center Professor of History, moderated the first workshop of the series, "Overview of Africana Studies." The remaining workshops covered a wide range of topics: "Africana Approaches"; "Applications of Theory and Criticism"; and "Area Studies." Featured speakers included scholars from various CUNY campuses: Tuzyline J. Allan (English, Baruch College), Ramona Hernandez (Director, CUNY Dominican Studies Institute), Kwando Kinshassa (African-American Studies, John Jay College), Frank Kirkland (Philosophy, Hunter College), and John Pittman (Philosophy, John Jay College), including Brent Edwards (English) of Rutgers University.

We continued the series in Fall 2003, bringing more faculty outside of CUNY to participate on panels. Below is a link listing the workshop and participants from the Fall 2003 series: http://web.gc.cuny.edu/provost/apit/facdev/colloquia_seminars/fall2003/africana_studies.html.

Receiving financial support from IRADAC, the series expanded its scope to include a workshop on "Science and Technology," as well as one that gathered several heads of undergraduate black studies departments at various CUNY schools. The ASG and IRADAC will continue these workshops in order to promote discussion and research and to transfer these ideas into the classroom, developing future scholars in the field.

The current coordinator of the workshops is Ejima Baker (Music).

Conferences

The Africana Studies Group presented its first conference, "Black Feminisms," held at The Graduate Center in March 2004. A first of its kind at The Graduate Center, the all-day conference attracted over 300 people. Scholars across the country, including those from Canada and abroad, presented works engaging black feminisms as a theory, and political instrument, for equality. Also included was a panel featuring CUNY undergraduates. Ann duCille (Wesleyan University) provided the keynote address. Click here to view the program.

The next ASG conference, "Black Masculinities," will be on Friday, February 5, 2005.

IRADAC and The CUNY African American Network (CAAN) sponsor a bi-annual conference that showcases the works of CUNY scholars. Click here for a link to prior conferences. The next interdisciplinary conference, "Work in Progress at CUNY on the African Diaspora," will take place on Friday, October 29, 2005.

Events

Past events sponsored by the Africana Studies Group have featured the following speakers:

• Tuzyline Jita Allen (Baruch College; author of Womanist and Feminist Aesthetics: A Comparative Review and editor of Women Writing Africa): "Lindsey Collen: Postcolonial Considerations"
• Emily Bernard (University of Vermont-Burlington; author of Remember Me to Harlem: The Correspondence of Carl Van Vechten and Langston Hughes): "His Ways With White Folks: Langston Hughes and the Price of Interracial Intimacy"
• Faye V. Harrison (University of Tennessee, Knoxville; editor of African-American Pioneers in Anthropology and Decolonizing Anthropology: Moving Further Toward an Anthropology for Liberation): "Justice for All: Meeting the Challenges of Advocacy Research in the Global Age"
• Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie (SUNY Binghamton; author of Freedpeople in the Tobacco South, Virginia, 1860-1900): "Black Militias and Emancipation"
• James King (SUNY College at Old Westbury): "'Neither Fish Nor Fowl': Charles W. Chesnutt and the Harlem Renaissance"
• Charlotte Pierce-Baker (Duke University; author of Surviving the Silence: Black Women's Stories of Rape): "Surviving the Silence to Where We Are Now"
• Jerry Watts (City College/The Graduate Center; author of Amiri Baraka: The Politics and Art of a Black Intellectual): "Despair and the Black Intellectual: from Baraka to Harvard's 'Dream Team'"

Our film series, organized by Lise Esdaile, have included viewings and discussions of:

• Shirley Clarke's 1969 documentary, A Portrait of Jason, moderated by Village Voice and Film Comment contributor Melissa Anderson
• John Cassavetes' 1959 indie film Shadows, along with issues of passing and appropriation, moderated by Jon-Christian Suggs
• Oscar Micheaux's 1920 silent classic Within Our Gates, moderated by Michele Wallace.

An African diasporic film festival, organized by Jerry Carlson, host of CUNY-TV's City Cinematheque, and Jon-Christian Suggs, will take place on Saturday, October 23, 2005.

The Graduate Center, whether in conjunction with the Africana Studies Group or IRADAC, has events relating to Africana Studies. Click here for The Graduate Center home page, and view the pages of The Center for Humanities and The Continuing Education and Public Programs, as well as the events calendar for Africana-studies related events

Links

Below is a list of some Africana Studies-related links. It is by no means comprehensive. For the most part, these links are accessible to everyone (that is, no membership is required):

• AAAMC: Archives of African American Music and Culture (Indiana University, Bloomington)
• The African Women in Cinema Project
• Aframerindian Slave Narratives
• African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907
• African American Writers: A Celebration (Middle Tennessee State University)
• Africana American Literature and History (Internet School Media and Library Center)
• Africana.Com: The Gateway to the Black World
• African-American Info Center (Baltimore County Public Library)
• Afro-American Studies and Research Program (The Afro-American Studies and Research Program of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
• Association of Black Women Historians
• Black Cultural Center Library (West Lafayette, Indiana)
• Black Film Center/Archive (Indiana University)
• CARR: The Collegium for African American Research
• Institute for African Development (Cornell University)
• IRADAC: The Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Carribean (CUNY Graduate Center / City College of NY)
• H-Net: Gateway to African Studies on H-Net
• National Black Graduate Student Association
• Research Centers at The Graduate Center (clicking here will bring you to a list of the various centers)
• Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (New York Public Library)
• The Black Press Held by the Library of Congress
• The Lynching Century: African Americans Who Died In Racial Violence In The United States Places Of Death, 1865 - 1965
• Towards Racial Equality: Harper's Weekly Reports on Black America, 1857-1874
• Womanist Theory and Research: A Journal of Womanist and Feminist-of-Color Scholarship and Art (Women's Studies Consortium at the Univ. of Georgia)