Department of African American Studies

Making Sudan Count: the Economic Imaginaries of Decolonization
2018-12-06 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | 153 Haines Hall
Please join us as special guest speaker Alden H. Young gives a talk about the economic imaginaries of decolonization on December 6th, 2019 at 12PM in the Black Forum (Haines Hall 153).

Barbadian Emigration to Liberia: Transnational Blackness in the Making of a Black Nationality
2018-12-04 12:00 - 13:00 | 153 Haines Hall
Please join us on Tuesday, December 4th, 2019 in the Black Forum (Haines Hall 153) as special guest speaker Caree Ann Marie Banton gives a talk about transnational Blackness. This event is free and open to the public, we hope to see you there!

Talk by Sobukwe Odinga: "African Solutions to American Problems: US Strategic Interests and Regional Conflict in the Horn of Africa."
2018-12-03 12:00 - 13:00
Please join us next Monday, December 3rd, for a talk by Sobukwe Odinga: “African Solutions to American Problems: US Strategic Interests and Regional Conflict in the Horn of Africa.” The talk will be held in Rolfe Hall 2125.

African Solutions to American Problems: US Strategic Interests and Regional Conflict in the Horn of Africa
2018-12-03 12:00 - 13:00 | 153 Haines Hall
Please join us Monday, December 3rd, 2018 as special guest speaker Sobukwe Odinga gives a talk in the Black Forum (Haines 153) at 12PM. This event is free and open to the public, hope to see you there!

Cameron Rowland Art Workshop
2018-12-03 | Black Forum Room; Haines Hall 153
Please join us on Monday, December 3, for the third and final art workshop given my Cameron Rowland.

How Extended Family Health Affects Household Financial Status
2018-11-29 12:00 - 13:00 | 153 Haines Hall
How Extended Family Health Affects Household Financial Status

Jermaine Toney
National Science Foundation (NSF) Postdoctoral Research Fellow | Cornell University

NOVEMBER 29TH, 2018
12:00PM-1:00PM
Black Forum Room, Haines Hall 153
As a postdoctoral scholar supported by the National Science Foundation, Jermaine Toney’s work builds upon the field of household finance. His current work examines the link between household financial status and health. His doctoral training was in economics. The title of his dissertation was “Essays on the Stratification in Wealth in the United States.” He offered these essays as a contribution to our understanding of wealth accumulation, reproduction, and inequality, with a particular focus on race. This contribution was informed by an analysis of the structural factors of wealth, including the role of intergenerational family connections

"Citizen Outsider: Racism and State Violence in France and Beyond"
2018-11-27 12:00 - 13:00 | 153 Haines Hall
Citizen Outsider: Racism and State Violence in France and Beyond

Jean Beaman
Assistant Professor, Sociology | Purdue University

November 27th, 2018
12:00PM-1:00PM
Black Forum Room, Haines Hall 153
Jean Beaman joins Purdue as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology. She received her Ph.D., M.A., and B.A. degrees from Northwestern University. Prior to joining Purdue, she had postdoctoral fellowships at Duke University and the European University Institute (Florence, Italy). Her research addresses how marginalized individuals conceptualize their social locations, based on race, ethnicity, citizenship, and socioeconomic status. Specifically, her current book project is an ethnographic examination of France’s North African second-generation and issues of upward social mobility, race and ethnicity, and cultural citizenship. Her other research and teaching interests include urban sociology; sociology of culture; HIV/AIDS; international migration; and ethnography and qualitative methods.

Cameron Rowland Art Workshop
2018-11-26 12:00 - 14:00 | Black Forum Room; Haines Hall 153
Please join us for the second art workshop given by Cameron Rowland.

Black Feminism & the Practice of Care
2018-11-16 09:00 - 16:30 | UCLA Faculty Center
Black Feminism & the Practice of Care
Friday, November 16th, 2018
9:00am-4:30pm
9:00am Breakfast, 9:30am Conversations begin, 4:30pm Light Reception
UCLA Faculty Center, Sequoia Room
Audre Lorde famously maintained that “caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” This gathering explores the concept of care against the backdrop of Lorde’s quote, through the lens of black feminist epistemology and praxis. It deliberately understands care as a community practice of generating power, as well as an individual ethic of self-love, and asks how ideas about care shape our political activism, critiques of power, and dreams of freedom. It also seeks to reimagine black wellbeing within a self-help culture that privileges whiteness and normative femininity, and explores how black people have cared for one another across time and space. Finally, it reconsiders the most familiar narratives of stress and depletion to show how black lives are diminished by state violence, historical trauma, neoliberal assaults, heteropatriarchal norms, ravaging kin ties, and intramural violence. How can we engage new possibilities for self-care, radical healing, wholeness, and joy?
Conversations by…
Aisha Finch | UCLA
Beverley Hanson | Sistren Theater Collective
Cheryl Harris | UCLA
Courtney Marshall | Phillips Exeter Academy
Erica Ball | Occidental College
Honor Ford-Smith | York University
Imani Johnson | UC Riverside
Jasmine Seydullah | Vassar College
Jessica Johnson | Johns Hopkins University
Jessica Millward | UC Irvine
Judith Casselburry | Bowdoin College
LaKisha Simmons | University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Marne Campbell | Loyola Marymount University
SA Smythe | UC Irvine
Sarah Haley | UCLA
Terrion Williamson | University of Minnesota
Tiffany Willoughby-Herard | UC Irvine
Register here:
BFPC2018.EVENTBRITE.COM
Flyer Here
Sponsored by the UC Consortium for Black Studies in California, the Center for the Study of Women, the Department of Gender Studies, the Office of Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity,
the Division of Humanities, the Division of Social Sciences, and the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies

Please note that this is a fragrance-free event

Black History in Dark Times: Reflections of an Historian
2018-11-15 16:00 - 18:00 | 6275 Bunche Hall
Please join us for a talk with historian and scholar, Peter Hudson. More information on the flyer attached.

The Black Blackout: New Media Erasure of Black Narratives - And How to Fight Back
2018-11-01 12:30 - 14:00 | 153 Haines Hall
Please join us for a talk and discussion with Esther Iverem, writer, artist and executive producer of “On the Ground: Voices of Resistance from the Nation’s Capital” on Pacifica Radio.

2018 IAC Fall Forum
2018-10-18 15:00 - 17:00 | UCLA James West Alumni Center
2018 IAC Fall Forum
Save the Date!

Thursday, October 18, 2018
3:00pm to 5:00pm

UCLA James West Alumni Center

Please join us for presentations from the Institute of American Cultures visiting scholars for 2018-2019
More information to follow.

Organized by the Institute of American Cultures and co-sponsored by the American Indian Studies Center, the Asian American Studies Center, the Bunche Center for African American Studies, and the Chicano Studies Research Center.

Lyrics from Lockdown
2018-10-18 - 2018-10-20 | The Kennedy Center
Lyrics from Lockdown
Thursday, October 18, 2018 – Saturday, October 20, 2018
Hip Hop Culture
A critically acclaimed exposé of the ways race, class, power, and privilege shape prisons and policing in America, Lyrics from Lockdown is a story of survival that reveals how the justice system can radically change a young person’s life. In this one-man multimedia production, prison activist, actor, author, and Hip Hop theater innovator Bryonn Bain tells his own unbelievable true story by weaving together the voices of more than 40 characters. Each show is followed by a town hall dialogue.
BUY TICKETS HERE

Cameron Rowland- Art Workshop
2018-10-16 12:00 - 13:30 | Black Forum Room; Haines Hall 153
CAMERON ROWLAND
ART WORKSHOP
OCTOBER 16th, 2018 | 12:00pm-1:30pm
Future Workshop Dates:
November 26th, 2018 and December 3rd, 2018
Please join us this Tuesday, October 16th at Noon in the Black Forum (153 Haines) for one of three workshops given by artist Cameron Rowland.
Check out Cameron Rowland’s latest exhibition D37 this weekend. For more on Cameron and the D37 exhibit please visit the following link: https://www.moca.org/storage/app/media/CameronRowland_D37_Pamphlet.pdf
Lunch will be provided at the workshop
RSVP HERE

A Poetry Reading by Major Jackson
2018-10-15 16:00 - 17:00
A Poetry Reading by Major Jackson
Monday, October 14th, 2018
4:00PM
193 Kaplan Hall

Black Convocation 2018
2018-10-09 17:30 - 20:00 | Carnesale Commons
Black Convocation 2018
Tuesday, October 9, 2018
5:30 PM – 8:00 PM
The Black Convocation is an annual event that welcomes new and returning students to the UCLA campus and makes them aware of the different organizations, departments, and resources available to serve them. It is an evening full of Bruin pride, providing encouragement, anecdotes about the past, and a glimpse of the future from UCLA faculty, staff, and alumni dedicated to supporting all students.
The Black Convocation is free and open to the public.
Maps & directions. Parking can be purchased at Parking Lot DD.
The 2018 Black Convocation at UCLA was organized by the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, UCLA Department of African American Studies, UCLA Black Alumni Association, Office of Residential Life (ORL), Afrikan Student Union (ASU), UCLA Career Center, UCLA Black Graduate Student Association (BGSA), Academic Advancement Program (AAP), UCLA Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, Connecting Communities to UCLA (CCU), UCLA Community Programs Office & UCLA Student Affairs – Enrollment Management.
Register Here on Eventbrite!

Asmarina: Voices & Images of a Postcolonial Heritage: Screening and Q&A with filmmaker Medhin Paolos
2018-10-07 15:00 - 17:00 | Darren Star Theater (Melnitz Hall 1422)
Asmarina: Voices & Images of a Postcolonial Heritage: Screening and Q&A with filmmaker Medhin Paolos
Sunday, Oct. 7th, 2018
at the Darren Star Theater (Melnitz Hall 1422)
225 Charles E Young Dr. E
Please click here for map and directions.

Italy and the Geopolitics of Migration: Aesthetic Approaches
2018-10-04 09:00 - 20:00 | Darren Star Theater (Melnitz Hall 1422)
Italy and the Geopolitics of Migration: Aesthetic Approaches
Thursday, Oct. 4
9:00am – 12:00pm at the Darren Star Theater (Melnitz Hall 1422)
1:00pm – 8:00pm at Royce Hall (Room 314)

Please click here to RSVP

Ethnic & Indigenous Studies Welcome
2018-10-01 16:00 - 18:00 | UCLA James West Alumni Center
Ethnic & Indigenous Studies Welcome
Monday, October 1st, 2018
4:00pm-6:00pm
James West Alumni Center
African American Studies, American Indian Studies, Asian American Studies, and Chicana/o Studies host the 2nd Ethnic and Indigenous Studies Welcome, open to all students, alumni and Bruin affiliates. Explore Ethnic and Indigenous Studies at UCLA. Please join us for FREE food, music, and giveaways with fellow students, faculty, and staff. Learn how Ethnic and Indigenous Studies fits into your UCLA experience and beyond. Welcome new Bruins!

RSVP HERE

Department of African American Studies Commencement Celebration
2018-06-16 11:30 - 13:00 | UCLA Fowler Museum, Lenart Auditorium 308 Charles E Young Dr N, Los Angeles, CA 90024
Congratulations! The faculty and staff of the Department of African American Studies are looking forward to sharing this wonderful occasion with you.
Date: Saturday, June 16, 2018
Time: 11:30 A.M.
Location: Fowler Museum, Lenart Auditorium
Ticket Information:

Students may request up to 4 complimentary tickets for the Department of African American Studies Ceremony.
An additional four tickets per student are available at $12.00/each.
You should ONLY order tickets for your guests – you do not need a ticket for yourself.
Depending on how many tickets are ordered by all students, there may be extras available. If you would like additional tickets to the ceremony, please e-mail staff@afam.ucla.edu with your name, I.D.# and the number of EXTRA tickets you need (outside of what is ordered online).
Tickets are ordered through MyUCLA for college and departmental graduation ceremonies.
All ticket sales are final. No refunds will be issued for unused tickets.

Parking:

You can pre-purchase parking passes for your guests. The UCLA Central Ticket Office will sell pre-paid Commencement parking permits beginning in May ($12 per permit). The UCLA Central Ticket Office is open from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, Monday-Friday.
The closest parking structure to our venue is Parking Structure 4.
Students or guests with disabilities should contact the Center for Accessible Education (310) 825-1501 voice; (310) 206-6083 TDD, to receive information about parking and other assistance.

On Commencement Day:

Graduates are requested to arrive in front of the Fowler Museum, Lenart Auditorium in African regalia for check-in at 10:30am. Please be on time.
Seating is unreserved. Doors will open at 11:00am.
The ceremony will start promptly at 11:30pm and is expected to last about an hour and half.
Graduates will be asked to sit together in a separate section.

Please contact the Department of African American Studies staff for any questions: staff@afam.ucla.edu

'Race and the Totalitarian Century' with Vaughn Rasberry
2018-05-15 17:00 - 19:00 | UCLA Bunche Hall 6275
Race and the Totalitarian Century
A discussion with author Vaughn Rasberry
moderated by Justin Desmangles
Winner of the Ralph J. Bunche Award from the American Political Science Association, and the American Book Award, from the Before Columbus Foundation, Race and the Totalitarian Century: Geopolitics in the Black Literary Imagination, shows how a group of black writers challenged Cold War liberalism’s conceit that it stood in stark opposition to totalitarianism (Nazism and Stalinism). Writers such as Richard Wright, W. E. B. Du Bois, Shirley Graham, C. L. R. James, and John A. Williams, committed to global decolonization and black freedom, pointed to liberal democracies’ legacy of repression and injustice. As a result, they developed a perspective that reimagined the anti-fascist, anti-communist narrative through the lens of racial injustice, with the U.S. as a tyrannical force in the Third World but also as an ironic agent of Asian and African independence.

Tuesday, May 15th, 2018
5:00pm-7:00pm
History Conference Room, Bunche Hall 6275
CLICK HERE FOR THE FLYER
Vaughn Rasberry is Associate Professor of English at Stanford University. He works on African American and African Diaspora literature, 20th-century U.S. fiction, postcolonial theory, and philosophical theories of modernity
Justin Desmangles is the director of the Before Columbus Foundation and host of the radio broadcast New Day Jazz
This event is sponsored by the Department of African American Studies, Department of English, Gary B. Nash Chair & the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies.

Chocolate Cities: The Black Map of American Life
2018-05-09 18:00 - 21:00 | California African American Museum
UCLA’s Department of African American Studies, Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, Department of Urban Planning, and Department of Sociology present
Chocolate Cities: The Black Map of American Life
with authors Marcus Anthony Hunter and Zandria F. Robinson
in conversation with Scot Brown, Alma Burrell, Lynnée Denise, Frankie “Kash” Waddy

Wednesday, May 9th, 2018
6:00pm-9:00pm
California African American Museum | 600 State Drive | Los Angeles, CA 90037
Free and open to the public.

Chocolate Cities Flyer

RSVP HERE

"The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam" by Ula Taylor
2018-04-30 16:00 - 18:00 | UCLA Bunche Hall 6275
The UC Consortium for Black Studies presents
THE PROMISE OF PATRIARCHY:
WOMEN AND THE NATION OF ISLAM

Black, Brown, and Powerful: Freedom Dreams in Unequal Cities
2018-04-26 17:00 - 20:00 | Los Angeles Trade-Technical Center, 400 West Washington Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, 90015, United States
In Los Angeles and elsewhere, black and brown communities face multiple forms of banishment and exploitation. At this evening of inspiring talks and performances, we shine a light on organizing frameworks and resistance strategies that challenge exclusion and refuse subordination.
We invite scholars, residents, activists, community-based and nonprofit organizations, foundations, policymakers and public officials, and all those interested in social justice work, to join us.
The full program is available HERE

Beyond Coloniality: Freedom in the Caribbean Intellectual Tradition
2018-04-25 12:30 - 14:00 | Black Forum Room; Haines Hall 153
“Beyond Coloniality: Freedom in the Caribbean Intellectual Tradition”
Lecture by Aaron Kamugisha

Aaron Kamugisha is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus. He is the editor of Caribbean Political Thought: The Colonial State to Caribbean Internationalisms (2013), Caribbean Political Thought: Theories of the Post-Colonial State (2013), (with Yanique Hume) Caribbean Cultural Thought: From Plantation to Diaspora (2013) and Caribbean Popular Culture: Power, Politics and Performance (2016), and with Jane Gordon, Lewis Gordon and Neil Roberts Journeys in Caribbean Thought: The Paget Henry Reader (2016). His work has been published in journals such as Race & Class, Small Axe, The Philosophical Forum, Caribbean Quarterly, Proudflesh, The Journal of Caribbean History and the Journal of West Indian Literature.

Reconsidering Education and Imprisonment: A Conversation on Prisons, Race, and Education
2018-04-24 16:00 - 19:00 | 153 Haines Hall
The UCLA Departments of African American Studies & Education Present:
DISPOSSESSION & ENCLOSURE: RECONSIDERING EDUCATION AND IMPRISONMENT
a conversation with Sabina Vaught & Damien Sojoyner
Sabina Vaught, associate professor and chair of the Tufts University Department of Education & Damien Sojoyner, assistant professor of anthropology at UC Irvine, will discuss their respective books Compulsory: Education and the Dispossession of Youth in a Prison School and First Strike: Educational Enclosures in Black Los Angeles. Based on extensive ethnography, these groundbreaking examinations alter previous understandings of the relationship between schooling and the carceral state.
Tuesday, April 24th, 4pm
The Black Forum, Haines 153
This event is co-sponsored by the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies
Click here for flyer

New Directions in Black Queer Studies
2018-04-12 17:00 - 19:00 | UCLA Ackerman Union Second Floor Lounge, AU2414
The UC Consortium for Black Studies presents
New Directions in Black Queer Studies
A Conversation with

Cathy Cohen, David and Mary Winton Green Professor of Political Science, The University of Chicago
and

Roderick Ferguson, Professor of African American and Gender and Women’s Studies, The University of Illinois at Chicago

Moderated by

Uri McMillan, Associate Professor of English, UCLA
Thursday, April 12th, 2018
5:00pm-7:00pm
Bruin Reception Room | UCLA Ackerman Union Second Floor Lounge, AU2414
RSVP HERE

Beauty and the Black: Aesthetics Politics and Black Reproduction in Brazil
2018-04-04 12:00 - 14:00 | UCLA Haines Hall 153
Beauty and the Black: Aesthetics Politics and Black Reproduction in Brazil
Ugo Edu
Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Anthropology
UC Davis

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4
12:00PM
Black Forum Room, Haines Hall 153
lunch will be provided
Based on ethnographic research in Salvador, Bahia, this talk explores the role of aesthetics in the construction and perception of what constitutes healthy reproduction and reproductive practices. I draw on women’s navigations within a Brazilian economy of aesthetics, race, and sexuality and the way these navigations shape and are shaped by processes and procedures related to the governance and measurements of reproduction and reproductive health. I focus on Black women’s experiences of contraceptive use, attempts to acquire tubal ligations, and family construction. I analyze the way that values, sensibilities, and affect that have come to adhere to particular appearances and arrangements, have also adhered to the perception and apprehension of reproductive decision-making (seen and unseen, articulated and not-articulated), reproductive health, and family constructions. This work points to the importance of an understanding and recognition of the aesthetic underpinnings of health and biomedical systems.
Dr. Ugo Edu is a medical anthropologist, currently a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. Previously, she was the Science, Justice, and Health Equity Postdoctoral Fellow at the Health Equity Institute at San Francisco State University. She received her PhD from the joint Medical Anthropology program at University of California, San Francisco/UC Berkeley, with a designated emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Her scholarship has a strong interdisciplinary approach to issues of aesthetics, affect, race, gender, body knowledge and modification, and social justice. In her research, she focuses on the politics of reproduction, reproductive and sexual health, and health inequities in both global and national contexts. She situates her work at the intersection of medical anthropology, public health, black feminism, and science, technology, and society studies.

Blackness and Borderscapes: Queering the Black Mediterranean
2018-04-02 12:00 - 14:00 | UCLA Haines Hall 153
Blackness and Borderscapes: Queering the Black Mediterranean

SA Smythe
President’s Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Gender & Sexuality Studies
UC Irvine

MONDAY, APRIL 2
12:00PM
Black Forum Room | Haines Hall 153

In this presentation, Dr. SA Smythe addresses recent challenges in the regulation of legal residency and pathways to citizenship in Italy. Smythe reads contemporary Black Italian women’s writing to consider the stakes of cultural belonging, human rights, and the Italian literary canon in the constitution of the Black Mediterranean. They think alongside Black, Trans, and Mediterranean Studies scholars to expose the material and psychological violence of Frontex Europe and the legacies of colonial and fascist Italy by discussing the politics of citizenship and cultural production without relying on the desire to redeem or reconcile its legal hierarchies.
Dr. SA Smythe is a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Gender & Sexuality Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Their book manuscript, Crisis and the Canon: Shifting Representation Regimes in the Black Mediterranean, is a transdisciplinary project that examines racialized aporias in the narration of italianità in the Black Mediterranean from the Risorgimento (Italian Unification) to the present. The monograph is a meditation on canonicity and citizenship in the wake of Europe’s self-initiated “crises” of migration and attendant levels of dispossession. SA is president and founder of the Queer Studies Caucus of the American Association of Italian Studies and publishing editor of THEM – Trans Literary Journal. SA is also a poet and an activist who performs and organizes in queer trans Black and abolitionist writing collectives across London, Bologna, Berlin, and most recently Los Angeles.

From Zamunda to Wakanda: Celebrating 30 years of Culturally Diverse Design and Imagination in Film
2018-03-26 19:00 - 21:00 | James Bridges Theater, 235 Charles E Young Dr.
From Zamunda to Wakanda:
Celebrating 30 Years of Culturally Diverse Design and
Imagination in Film
featuring an evening with costume designers
Deborah Nadoolman Landis
Coming to America (1988)
and
Ruth E. Carter
Black Panther (2018)
Imagination has been key to the Black Freedom Struggle and Black cultural expression. No two places best reflect this point more than the filmic chocolate cities of Zamunda (Coming To America, 1988) and Wakanda (Black Panther 2018). In celebration of Women’s History Month, we honor the 30th Anniversary of Coming to America bringing it into dialogue with the new global hit Black Panther. This event will bring together the marvelous Academy Award nominated costume designers for both films, Deborah Nadoolman Landis and Ruth E. Carter, in a dynamic revisit of each film and a discussion of their paths to and through the films. 30-years-ago the world was introduced to the African chocolate city, Zamunda, as the titular Prince Akeem (played by Eddie Murphy), went on a global search for the love of his life. A worldwide classic then and now, Coming to America, especially as realized through costume design has lived on, inspiring everything from weddings, to birthdays, to many subsequent films. 30-years-later the world has again witnessed the magic and power of African inspired costume design in Black Panther as the protagonist King T’Challa serves and protects his people and country from outsiders and internal strife.
Please join us March 26, 2018 at the James Bridges Theater at 7:00 p.m., as we gather to honor the genius of costume designers Deborah Nadoolman Landis and Ruth E. Carter, exploring the people, ideas and the research that guided their visions and helped make the African dreamscapes of Zamunda and Wakanda a rich and lasting portrait of Black possibilities, futures, lives and love.

RSVP NOW!
zamundatowakanda.eventbrite.com

Co-sponsored by:
UCLA Department of African American Studies
UCLA African Studies Center
UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television
The David C. Copley Center for the Study of Costume Design
