Events 2009:

The John Coltrane Memorial Contemporary Jazz Series kicks off second season
November 13

Click here for details

The John Coltrane Memorial Contemporary Jazz Series - Part II

April 4 and April 10 at 7:30pm. Click here for details

Events 2008:

Kwanzaa Celebration

Catered by Jerk Hut

Date: December 3, 2008

Time: 5:00 PM

Place: Sims 219

"Constructing History" with Carrie Mae Weems

Internationally renowned artist, Carrie Mae Weems, will speak at Syracuse University on Wednesday, November 12th at 5:30 p.m. Her presentation, "Constructing History: The Visual Work of Carrie Mae Weems,” will be the held in the Watson Auditorium at Light Work/Community Darkrooms, 316 Waverly Avenue.  It is the first event of the 2008-2009 colloquium series sponsored by the African American Studies Department.  The event is free and open to the public.

Weems’ photography-centered work incorporates text, sculpture, and sound to explore possibilities for political and cultural change, as well as “the complexity of human experience” in African American history and African cultures. Her award-winning work has been exhibited and collected by such major entities as The Metropolitan Museum, MOMA, the Whitney Museum, the Getty Museum, and the National Museum for Women in the Arts. She has held Artist-in Residence and teaching positions at institutions around the country.

Date: Wednesday, November 12th

Time: 5:30

Place: Watson Auditorium at Light Work/Community Darkrooms, 316 Waverly Avenue

LINK TO PDF FLIER: Carrie Mae Weems Flier Link

PAS Graduate Student Brown Bag Series: 9/17, 10/22, and 11/19

The Department of African American Studies is proud to announce the start of the Pan African Studies Graduate Student Brown Bag Series occurring the 3rd Wednesday of each month in room 219 Sims Hall Time: 12 - 1:00 p.m.

Date:
Wednesday , Nov. 19, 2008
12 Noon to 1:00 p.m. in 219 Sims Hall

Paul Burgman

Title: Venezuelan Democracy:
Grassroots Mobilization and Resistance in the New Bolivarian Revolution

Abstract:
This thesis seeks to analyze the different forms of social organizing in Venezuela mainly focusing on the Afro-Venezuelan Network, the community council of the neighborhood of St. Augustine in Caracas and the women's cooperative, Cooperativa Mudebar. Central to my analysis is the different political frameworks, mainly race, gender, and class, that the social organizations utilize to engage in dialogue with the state as well as the different forms of leadership within these particular social organizations. I question where "politics" are allowed to take place in Venezuela by both the state and the Afro- Venezuelan Network as well as conclude by discussing the need for a collective pathology for Venezuelan social organizations to move forward in creating a new social ideology.

Adnan Ajsic

Abstract:
Africa is a continent of remarkable linguistic diversity. Yet, in spite of its rich linguistic heritage, or perhaps exactly because of it, African states continue to rely on ex-colonial European languages in institutional settings such as government business, higher education, and the media. This prolonged linguistic and cultural dependence on the former colonial dominion is detrimental for Africa’s long-term development, as well as obviously antithetical to the crucial Pan African concept of self-reliance and thus full independence. Pursuing their narrow class interests, African ruling elites continue to sabotage Africa’s epistemic liberation, opting for the role of a proxy for neocolonialism rather than an agent of progressive change. A possible solution to the continuing dependency, it is argued, lies in the development of an endogenous Pan African language policy with which to challenge the existing Western linguistic and cultural hegemony, as well as the attendant economic and political domination. This study explores attitudes toward Pan African language policy based on an African lingua franca among university students in the strategically chosen location of Cape Town, South Africa. A renewed plea for a Pan African language policy based on an African lingua franca is put forward.

Marcus Hill

Title: Black Sexuality and Sex Work

Abstract:
One of history’s jokes is that the one thing that has been around since the beginning of human civilization is sex work. Remember, it was a sex worker who cleaned Jesus' feet with her hair. Tradition also says Mary Magdalene was a sex worker. As society continues to advance in mathematics, communications, science, and technology, sex work continues to move along with it.

Unlike mathematics, communications, science, and technology, sex work is rarely talked about unless it involves the participation of a public figure or celebrity. The recent scandal involving former New York governor Eliot Spitzer immediately comes to mind. Conversations on a general level tend to scapegoat the sex workers themselves as the reason for sex work, completely ignoring the people who purchase their services.

American society has an additional flaw in its history that connects to sex work and that is the history of chattel slavery and the enslavement of Africans in this country. One of the results of this phase in American history is the complete exploitation of the body of the Black woman. Unlike enslaved African men whose physical labor was exploited, the enslaved African woman's reproductive abilities were a form of labor used to expand and continue slavery in this country. The methods used to get to that means involved extreme sexual terrorism. The Black woman's body in America became a vessel not her own. Its only function was to serve the needs of her white slave owners. The Black woman and her body became a commodity in the United States under chattel slavery. In order for this exploitation to continue it had to be justified. Thus the Black woman in America was scientifically proven to be a person with a hyper-sexuality and the constant sexual terrorism she experienced was her fault, not the fault of her terrorist (White, 1999).

The Black woman became could not be raped because she has an animalistic sexuality; she is deviant. This dark history in American society has infected itself into America's present and has yielded problems that on the surface warrant no serious attention and remains at the individual level, but are actually rooted in history. More importantly, this history has given the Black woman in America a completely different history in this country from that of white women, Latina women, Asian women, and Native American women. That history has yielded a new present in which Black women are automatically assumed to be immoral beings that cannot control their sexualities.

Though there are women who work as sex workers who are of different racial/ethnic backgrounds from Black women, it is the continued historical stigma of the Black woman as a hyper-sexual being that serves as the backbone of this research.