African American Studies

#THISISWHY This year, four Wesleyan faculty are coordinating a year-long interdisciplinary project that enables students from an array of majors and academic disciplines to collaborate, create and work together as a learning community under the theme "Renaissance Projects: Reclaiming Memory, Movement and Migration." The Collaborative Clusters Initiative of the Allbritton Center enables faculty from a variety of departments and programs to develop a shared research project with a unifying theme. Cluster courses in 2015-16 provide perspectives from dance, music, English, and African American studies on the ways performance practices have engaged the past and present in the face of great…

Elizabeth McAlister, professor of religion, professor of African American studies, professor of American studies, spoke at DePaul University on May 11. The topic of her talk was "American Evangelical Spiritual Warfare and Vodou in Haiti." According to the flyer for the talk, one strand of American evangelicalism practices so-called "spiritual warfare" in which Christian "prayer warriors" pray against "territorial strongholds." This group believes the world to be mapped into either Christian or demonic space, where Satanic forces operate as "strongholds" of evil. They believe that Haiti is under the influence of Satan. McAlister draws on recent ethnographic fieldwork in Haiti to…

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Gina Athena Ulysse, associate professor of anthropology, associate professor of African America studies, wrote an article, "Presumed Innocent: On Bill Traylor's Verve," which appeared on the website Anthropology Now. Ulysse reflects on an exhibit at the American Folk Art Museum by Bill Traylor, a former slave who began drawing at the age of 85, and produced his entire body of work in three years.

Gina Athena Ulysse, associate professor of anthropology, associate professor of African American studies, wrote a review of artist Robert Pruitt's Women, currently on exhibit at the Studio Museum of Harlem, in the Huffington Post. The exhibit features 20 portraits of contemporary black women drawn on brown butcher paper with conté-crayons. Ulysse writes: "Although, Pruitt's Women may be warriors, they are not embattled. They may be of and in struggle, yet they are not fighting. Their serenity is too often denied to black women. They are 'keepin' it surreal' inhabiting Suzanne Césaire's state of permanent readiness for the Marvelous."

For its 2013 Americas Forum, Wesleyan’s Center for the Americas is commemorating the centenary of Aimé Césaire, éminence grise of the Francophone Caribbean. Taking place on April 5-6 at Russell House, the annual symposium brings scholars and artists from "north" and "south" into dialogue about Césaire, who was not only a regional figure but also a global presence as an intellectual, poet, artist and politician. Celebrating his influential life, spanning from the movements of Surrealism and Negritude to his ideas on decolonization and spiritual and cultural pan-Africanism, the Americas Forum is also an intellectual consideration of Césaire’s contributions to our…

On a chilly January morning in 1978, Jesse Jackson delivered a rousing keynote address to a large group of political leaders. Energized from a recent meeting with President Jimmy Carter at the White House, the civil rights activist dazzled his audience with nearly an hour of political "gospel rock." At the end of Jackson’s fiery speech, his audience launched a five-minute standing ovation. Oddly, his audience was a group of white Republicans. Why would a liberal civil rights activist – with ties to the Democratic Party – engage a political party that had a reputation for turning its back on…

To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History hosted the National Youth Summit on Abolition on Feb. 11. Lois Brown, the Class of 1958 Distinguished Professor of African American Studies and English, joined a team of experts, scholars and activists in a moderated panel discussion to reflect upon the abolition movement of the 19th century and explore its legacy on modern-day slavery and human trafficking. The event was webcast live to more than 2,000 students and adults from 31 states and to schools in Kenya, Pakistan and the Republic of Suriname in…

(Story contributed by Jim H. Smith) In this issue of The Wesleyan Connection, we ask “5 Questions” of Ashraf Rushdy, professor of English, professor of African American Studies and chair of the African American Studies Program. Rushdy is the author of American Lynching, a meticulously researched interpretive history of how lynching became a uniquely American phenomenon and how it has endured, evolved and changed over the course of three centuries. The book was published by Yale University Press in October 2012. Q: Scholars have been writing about lynching for more than a century now. There is a significant body of extant…

In her illuminating new book, Doctoring Freedom (University of North Carolina Press), Gretchen Long ’89 shares the stories of African Americans who fought for access to both medical care and medical education, as she reveals the important relationship between medical practice and political identity. Even before emancipation, African Americans recognized that control of their bodies was an essential battleground in their struggle for autonomy, and they devised strategies to retain some of that control. During her research, Long, an associate professor of history at Williams College, closely studied antebellum medical journals, planters' diaries, agricultural publications, letters from wounded African American…

Gina Athena Ulysse, associate professor of anthropology, associate professor of African-American studies, was invited to perform her avant-garde meditation, "Voodoo Doll, What if Haiti Were a Woman?" at two international conferences in 2013. Ulysse's piece focuses on coercion and consent inspired by Gede, the Haitian Vodou spirit of life and death. She intersperses the story with Haiti’s geopolitical history, statistics, theory and Vodou chants. On Jan. 12-19, Ulysse will attend the 8th Encuentro of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at the Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil. There, she will join more than 400 artists, performers, scholars and activists who will…

Collaborative Cluster Provides Perspectives in Dance, Music, English, African American Studies

McAlister Speaks on American Evangelical Spiritual Warfare

Youth, Business, Healthcare Discussed at Africa Innovation Summit

Ulysse Writes Article about Artist Bill Traylor, a Former Slave

Ulysse Writes Exhibit Review of Contemporary Black Women Portraits

Americas Forum to Focus on Artist, Poet Aimé Césaire April 5-6

Assisted by Fellowship, Wright Reveals Black Agendas in GOP

Brown Panelist at National Youth Summit on Abolition

5 Questions With . . . Ashraf Rushdy on Lynching in America

Long ’89 Studies the Politics of African American Medical Care in Slavery and Emancipation

Ulysse to Perform Avant-Garde “Voodoo Doll” Meditation in Brazil, Ghana

Vodou Spirit, Haitian Culture in Ulysse’s Meditation Performance