LECTURES/EVENTS

Tuesday, November 17, 2009
"Black Malinche: The Black Woman as Traitor in African American Thought and Politics."
Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd, J.D., PH.D.
6:30PM, Room 9204/9205

Wednesday, December 9, 2009
"Looking for a few good men: A Racing-Gendering Analysis of Family Promotion Policies."
Julia Jordan-Zachery, J.D., PH.D.
6:30PM, Room 9207


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The Audre Lorde/Essex Hemphill Memorial Lecture

Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Hortense Spillers
Skylight Room, the Graduate Center

Hortense Spillers, is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor in English at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of, most recently, Black, White, and Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture.

Inaugurated by Hortense Spillers, the Lorde/Hemphill lLecture is meant to commemorate the lives of the American poets, Audre Lorde (1934-1992) and Essex Hemphill (1957-1995), as well as to encourage exciting scholarship and literary production within the communities to whom their poetry and prose spoke.

Co-sponsored by the Africana Studies Concentration and IRADAC

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IRADAC presents the Africana Studies Dissertation Discussions Fall 2009 -Spring 2010

As part of IRADAC's committment, to create an environment which elevates the academic experience of students at the Graduate Center, members of the Africana Studies Group are invited to lecture to an audience, consisting primarily of their peers, on dissertation/research topics. These lectures are designed to facilitate intellectual exchange between graduate students. The general configuration of these events will be a lecture followed by discussions, comments and question & answer. Open to the public. All dates are on Wednesdays. The event time is 12:00pm - 2:00pm.

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September 30, 2009
"When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong: Racial Authenticity, Academia and the Black Intellectual in Percival Everett’s Erasure."
Lavelle Porter
Room 8400/8402

This presentation is part of a dissertation project on academic novels and the politics of the black intellectual. Percival Everett’s satirical novel Erasure (1999) examines the significance of “authenticity” in black literary and cultural production. This presentation will survey the historical background of authenticity depicted in Everett’s novel, and will consider the ways in which black artists and intellectuals have conformed to and resisted the discourse of racial authenticity in their work.

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October 7, 2009
"Carrying the State’s Burden: Civil Society’s Role in South Africa’s Xenophobia Crisis"
Kaja Tretjak and Elan Abrell
Room 8301/8304, The Graduate Center

This presentation documents South African civil society's involvement in the xenophobia crisis response, focusing on the application of strategies developed over a decade of activism around HIV/AIDS to the range of human rights issues raised by the crisis. In particular, it examines the use of social justice legal activism to fortify the expansive rights guaranteed by the South African Constitution. The presentation further situates these organizations' efforts surrounding the crisis within the context of expanding abrogation of state responsibility and its transfer onto civil society, as well as xenophobic state practices that have set the stage for state inaction in the present case.

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October 28, 2009
“The World Is Yours: Post-Colonial Worlds in the Stand-Up Comedy of Jackie “Moms” Mabley and Richard Pryor."
H. Alexander Welcome
Room 8301/8304

This presentation explores the links that Mabley and Pryor make between colonialism and violence. Both posit violence as a phenomenon that can ground one in the present and as an important aspect of the workings of colonialism: an impulse indicative of colonialism’s aspiration to be perpetually active. General post-colonial theories about violence-based interruptions of colonial’s continuity are provided, as well as specific textual examples from the stand-up of Mabley and Pryor.

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November 11, 2009
"Strategies of Solidarity: Exploring Solidarity, Race, and Identity Amongst Afro-Caribbean Domestics in NYC".
Christine Pinnock
Room 8301/8304, The Graduate Center

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December 9, 2009
"Race and Real Estate: The End of the African American Welcome in Harlem, 1904."
Kevin McGruder
Room 8301/8304, The Graduate Center

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February 17, 2010

Ted Sammons
Room 9207, The Graduate Center

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March 10, 2010

Stacie McCormick
Room 9207, The Graduate Center

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March 24, 2010
"The Correspondence of Edward Dorn and Amiri Baraka: A New Look at African American Poetics in the 1960s"
Claudia Pisano
Room 9206, The Graduate Center

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April 7, 2010
"Ethics and Writing in the 'New South Africa"
Lily Saint
Room 9207, The Graduate Center

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April 21, 2010

Simone White
Room 9206, The Graduate Center

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FACULTY AND STUDENT DEVELOPMENT