Assistant Professor in African and African Diasporic History

Application Deadline: Screening of applications begins December 5, 2019. Review of applications may continue until the position is filled.

The Department of History at The University of Memphis invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position at the rank of Assistant Professor, with a specialization in African and African diasporic history, starting in Fall 2020. The department seeks to further strengthen its core program in African American history with the addition of a faculty member focusing on Africa and the African diaspora, with a preference for specialists in the precolonial era.

The successful applicant will be expected to teach upper-division and graduate courses in African and African diasporic history as well as a survey course in World, African American, or U.S. History. Normal teaching load is 2/2. The Department of History is committed to increasing the diversity of its faculty, and we therefore welcome applicants who are from groups that are historically underrepresented.

PhD required by the time of appointment.

The Search Committee will conduct preliminary interviews by video conference the second week of January 2020.

Application Instructions:

Applications must include:

  • Letter of application (“Cover Letter”)
  • CV
  • Writing excerpt from book/dissertation/article (“Other Document 1”)
  • Academic transcript (“Other Document 2”)
  • Contact information (including email address) for three professional references (“References List”)

Above text adapted from website.

Assistant Professor in Gender and Women’s Studies and African American and Africana Studies

Application Deadline: Review of applications will begin November 20, 2019 and position will remain open until filled.

The University of Kentucky in Lexington is in the second year of a multi-year hiring plan to build a more inclusive curriculum, diversify our faculty, support our Program in African American and Africana Studies, and to contribute to our new undergraduate major in that program. Faculty will have tenure homes is departments relevant to their training and research focus and are expected to actively help build and support the AAAS program. Last year we hired seven new faculty (https://aaas.as.uky.edu/uks-new-faculty-hires-taking-african-american-africana-studies-next-level-0). This year we plan to hire additional faculty, in diaspora studies, black feminisms, environmental justice, ethnomusicology, and the economics of inequality. This ad is explicitly a call for applications for a position in Women of Color Feminism/Critical Race Theory, with an emphasis on Black Feminisms.

The Program in African American and Africana Studies (AAAS) and the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies (GWS) at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky seek applications for a full-time, tenure-track, assistant professor who will actively contribute to the undergraduate and graduate programs and the research profiles of both units. We seek to hire a scholar in the area of Women of Color Feminism/Critical Race Theory, with an emphasis on Black Feminisms. Possible sub-specialties might include—but are not limited to—areas such as diasporas, environmental justice, migration studies, indigenous feminisms, transnational feminist studies, hip hop feminism, and decolonial methodologies within black studies.

Candidates are expected to have a PhD in hand by August 15, 2020.

Application Instructions:

Applicants should submit the following:

1) a cover letter including a statement of research and teaching interests that shows strong engagement with both GWS and AAAS
2) curriculum vitae
3) one publication or professional paper (upload as Specific Request 1)
4) diversity statement: in 1-2 pages, applicants should reflect on their commitments, approaches, and insights related to inclusion, diversity, and equity (upload as Specific Request 2).

Also provide the names and contact information for three references when prompted in the academic profile. This information may be utilized to solicit recommendation letters from your references within the employment system.

Above text adapted from website.

 

2020-2021 AADS Dissertation Fellowship – Boston College: Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences: African and African Diaspora Studies

Application Deadline: 8 January 2020 (11:59PM EST)

Boston College’s African & African Diaspora Studies Program (AADS) announces its dissertation fellowship competition.  Scholars working in any discipline in the Social Sciences or Humanities, with projects focusing on any topic within African and/or African Diaspora Studies, are eligible to apply.  We seek applicants pursuing innovative, preferably interdisciplinary, projects in dialogue with critical issues and trends within the field.

This 2020/2021 fellowship includes a $30,000 stipend; access to highly subsidized health insurance through Boston College; a $1,500 research budget; a $3,000 moving expense allotment, and a fully equipped, shared office.  The fellow must remain in residence for the 9-month academic year, deliver one public lecture, and teach one seminar course.

The fellow will also be compensated for teaching the course with a taxable service stipend. The fellow will have full access to BC’s seven libraries as well as several rare book and manuscript collections.  Of particular interest is the Nicholas M. Williams Caribbeana Collection, consisting of materials from and about Africa, Jamaica, and the British West Indies.  The fellow can also benefit from the Apprenticeship in College Teaching and Dissertation Bootcamp programs—both of which are completely voluntary—as well as events and installations sponsored by programs in International Studies, American Studies, Asian American Studies, Islamic Civilization and Societies, and the internationally renowned McMullen Museum.

Qualifications

Eligible applicants must be currently enrolled in a PhD Program and be ABD by the start of the fellowship year. US Citizens, Permanent Residents and International Students are encouraged to apply.

Application Instructions:

Submit all application materials – including letters of recommendation – by Wednesday, 8 January 2020 at 11:59 pm Eastern Standard Time (EST) via Interfolio.

Applications must include:
1) a 3000 word project proposal that includes a plan for completion and description of how this fellowship will assist applicant in achieving future professional goals
2) a 25 page MAXIMUM writing sample
3) a CV
4) three letters of recommendation, one of which must be from the dissertation advisor

Above text adapted from webpage.

CSA 2020 CFP: Identity Politics, Industry, Ecology and the Intelligent Economy in Caribbean Societies

CFP Deadline: 31 December 2019

Disruption is the new normal. In today’s so-called post-truth Fourth Industrial Revolution, driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data where data is heralded as the “new oil,” the Caribbean faces old and new forms of complexity as the 21st century progresses. The complexities of race, ethnicity, class, language (both official and creole), skin color, indigeneity, gender, sexuality, religion and nationality continue to present challenges and contradictions in the pursuit of improving the lives of Caribbean people or towards inclusive ecological “development.” Yet, in an ever more globalized era of fast-paced technological advancements, AI has transformational potentialities that will affect the complexities that confront Caribbean development and go beyond those associated with the ticklish politics of identity. The combination of the swift pace of technological transformations and the effects of these on political, social and economic organization; on popular culture; and on cultural expression raise intriguing questions about how Caribbean life can be organized towards national, regional and even external development agendas. Moreover, the serious ecological challenges, most prominent of which is currently the threat of climate change, mean that sustainable practices must be at the center of economic development. Although balancing ecological concerns with more traditional approaches to “industry” for development poses challenges, even more daunting are shifts towards more digital and “high-tech” industrial and economic activities.  Cloud computing, robotics, genetics, artificial intelligence, 3-D Printing, bio-technology, Nano-technology, intelligent machines, and block chain technologies are but some of the innovations that offer possibilities and perils, and add further layers of complexity to already complicated Caribbean realities. The CSA 2020 conference invites submissions from any disciplinary persuasion that seek to analyze, deconstruct and reflect on the technological transformations, the politics of identity and the somewhat contradictory ecological and industrial imperatives for “development” that combine to affect Caribbean societies and realities.

Conference themes:

Proposals are welcomed from the individual thematic areas presented below. Since the themes of the conference are interconnected, we also enthusiastically encourage proposals that explore the linkages between the conference thematic areas.  We will also consider proposals that go beyond or fall outside of the suggested thematic areas by exploring issues of significance for the Caribbean. However, priority will be given to proposals that seek to address the conference themes.

A. Identity Politics and Caribbean Development
B. Industry and Ecology
C. Industry and the Intelligent Economy

Please refer to the website for the full CFP and to submit an abstract, and direct any questions to: [email protected].

Above text and image adapted from email and website.

 

Ebony G. Patterson | …to dig between the cuts, beneath the leaves, below the soil… | Hales New York

Opening Reception:
6pm – 8pm
24 October 2019
Exhibition:
October 24 – December 20, 2019
Hale’s New York

547 West 20th Street

Gallery installation shot

Hales is delighted to announce …to dig between the cuts, beneath the leaves, below the soil…, an exhibition of recent works by Ebony G. Patterson (b. 1981 Kingston, Jamaica). In her first solo exhibition with the gallery, Patterson continues with her exploration of gardens, an essential arc of her practice. This exhibition comprises of a new series of monumental paper collages which take their departure from Patterson’s celebrated touring solo exhibition, …while the dew is still on the roses…, which first opened at Pérez Museum of Art Miami (November 2018), and is currently on view at Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY (through January 5, 2020).

Patterson began working on the collages in this exhibition in her studio in Jamaica, before completing them on a residency at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, AR, in 2019. In Patterson’s work, she explores the idea of the garden as both real and imagined, in relation to the procurement and legacies of postcolonial space:

“I am interested in how gardens – natural but cultivated settings – operate with social demarcations. I investigate their relationship to beauty, dress, class, race, the body, land and death.”
(Ebony G. Patterson, 2018)

In …to dig between the cuts, beneath the leaves, below the soil… Patterson continues to deftly combine splendor with danger. Framing the garden as an active site of power, Patterson explores it as a metaphor for postcolonial space and an extension of the body. Juxtaposing visibility and invisibility; death and survival, Patterson’s works remain filled with an overwhelming sense of hope – in the toughest of circumstances, life will always grow.

Above text and image adapted from email and website.

Melancholia Africana: The Indispensable Overcoming of the Black Condition

7pm – 9pm
30 October 2019
The People’s Forum

320 West 37th Street

This year marks the publication of the English translation of Nathalie Etoke’s Melancholia Africana: The Indispensable Overcoming of the Black Condition. In richly poetic prose Etoke considers pain singing the happiness to come, memories of forgetting, and on va faire comment? She argues that Africana melancholy is distinct. Rooted in collective and historical experiences of enslavement, colonization, and neocolonialism marked by loss of land, freedom, language, culture, and self. Put differently, expropriation of labor and of land also annihilated age-old cycles of life. Considering what to do in the wake of such annihilation, Etoke explores how diasporic Africans reconcile that which has been destroyed with what is newly introduced, framing this inherent tension as the character of Africana historical becoming. On October 30th, Etoke will read from and speak about her newly translated work while Lewis R. Gordon, who authored its new foreword, and Souleymane Bachir Diagne will address the continued relevance of its searching diagnoses.

Suggested donation: $6/$10/$15, no one turned away for inability to pay.

Above text and image adapted from email.

Education and the Politics of Education in the Caribbean

CFP Deadline: 31 October 2019

This Call For Papers is for a Congress on the Caribbean that will take place in March 2020 in Erlangen (Bavaria), Germany. Questions and/or abstracts (up to 500 words in English, French, or Spanish) should be sent to the email address on the flyer: conference-caribbean2020@fau.de.

Above text and image adapted from email.

Decoloniality Workshop

6:00pm- 7:30pm
October 7, 2019

Academic Building (West Wing), Room 4052
Rutgers University
RSVP and request a copy of  pre-circulated paper via email to: [email protected] 

Image preview

Alexandria Smith (Women’s and Gender Studies) will present a paper titled “The Woman From Carriacou: Audre Lorde and Dionne Brand Respond to the 1983 US Invasion of Grenada.” Gabriel Bámgbóṣé (Comparative Literature) will be discussant.

decolonialityworkshop.wordpress.com

Sponsored by the Rutgers University Program in Comparative Literature.

Food and light refreshments provided. Event open to the public.

Above text and image adapted from email.

Story Time: Nadia Hohn presents A Likkle Miss Lou: How Jamaican Poet Louise Bennett-Coverley Found Her Voice

Saturday, September 21, 2019, 10:30 AM
Bank Street Bookstore
2780 Broadway (corner of 107th St)
New York, NY 10025

Sunday, September 22, 11:30 AM
Greenlight Bookstore – Prospect Lefferts Gardens Store
632 Flatbush Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11225

Sunday, September 22, 2019, 1:30 PM
Greenlight Bookstore – Fort Green Store
686 Fulton Street
Brooklyn, NY 1127

Nadia Hohn, author of Harriet Tubman: Freedom Fighter, presents her latest picture book biography, A Likkle Miss Lou. Jamaican poet and entertainer Louise Bennett Coverley, better known as “Miss Lou,” played an instrumental role in popularizing Jamaican patois internationally. This picture book biography tells the story of Miss Lou’s early years, when she was a young girl who loved poetry but felt caught between writing “lines of words like tight cornrows” or words that beat “in time with her heart.” Despite criticism from one teacher, Louise finds a way to weave the influence of the music, voices, and rhythms of her surroundings into her poems. A vibrant, colorful, and immersive look at an important figure in Jamaica’s cultural history, this is also a universal story of a child finding and trusting her own voice. Nadia shares her book with an interactive story time where kids will get to sing folk songs, chant rhymes, and play Jamaican games! Ages 3 to 8.

Above text adapted from the Greenlight Bookstore webpage and the Bank Street Bookstore webpage.

 

 

Assistant Professor, Latina/Latino Studies (Tenure-Track)

Application Deadline: October 21, 2019

San Francisco State University’s, Department of Latina/Latino Studies offers an exciting opportunity for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position focused on Afro-Latinidad from a social science or humanities perspective beginning August 2020.

We seek a colleague whose teaching and research interests include a transnational understanding of the intersections of Afro-Latinidad in the United States, the Spanish Caribbean, and Latin America.

About the Department:

The Department of Latina/Latino Studies is a unique liberal arts BA degree program with an emphasis on equity, social justice, and community empowerment focused on developing critical thinking, analytical writing skills, and an area of expertise centered on Latinas/os/x in the U.S. The Latina/Latino Studies Department favors a pan-Latino approach to the study of Chicana/o/x, Mexican, Central American, South American, and Caribbean-American communities in the U.S. We emphasize gender, transnational identities, global economies, social movements, and critical, socially responsible scholarship that links our classrooms to local communities and their empowerment through both our curriculum and our community service learning program.

About the University:

The mission of San Francisco State University is to create and maintain an environment for learning that promotes respect for and appreciation of scholarship, freedom, human diversity, and the cultural mosaic of the City of San Francisco and the Bay Area; to promote excellence in instruction and intellectual accomplishment; and to provide broadly accessible higher education for residents of the region and state, as well as the nation and world. To fulfill its mission, the University is committed to the following goals:

•Attracting, retaining and graduating a highly diverse student body
•Providing disciplinary and interdisciplinary liberal arts and professional education that is academically rigorous and intellectually challenging
•Providing curricula that reflect all dimensions of human diversity, and that encourage critical thinking and a commitment to social justice
•Recruiting, retaining and supporting a diverse faculty whose teaching demonstrates an active engagement with their individual fields of study and whose creative and scholarly work is an extension of the classroom, laboratory or studio
•Employing a staff and administration reflecting the diversity of our student community and the values of the campus;
•Fostering a collegial and cooperative intellectual environment that includes recognition and appreciation of differing viewpoints and promotes academic freedom within the University community; and
•Serving the communities with which its students and faculty are engaged.

Responsibilities:

The position requires undergraduate teaching of courses on the Afro-Latino diaspora, mentoring and advising of graduate and undergraduate students, developing an active ongoing scholarship program in one’s area of specialty, and ongoing committee and service assignments.

Teaching assignments will include the following courses:
LTNS 215: Introduction to Latina/Latino Studies
LTNS 380: Afro-Latina/o Diasporas
LTNS 440: Caribbean Cultures and Spirituality
LTNS 467: Caribbeans in the U.S.: History and Heritage.

Teaching assignments may also include the following and other existing courses:
LTNS 470: Latina/o Immigration to the U.S.
LTNS 278: History of Latinos in the U.S.
The Department supports the creation of additional courses that focus on the broader Afro-Latino diaspora.

The candidate’s research agenda should address how ideas of Blackness and Latinidad have intersected historically and would connect this to contemporary experiences between and among African Americans, Afro-Latinos, and African, Caribbean and Latin American immigrants in the U.S.

Qualifications:

Required
•PhD in Ethnic Studies, Latina/Latino Studies, Sociology, American Studies, History, or similar social science or humanities field.
•Record of working and communicating effectively with colleagues and students.

Preferred
•One to two years of undergraduate teaching experience with a large, diverse student body or in a multicultural setting.
•Knowledge of principles and methods for curriculum design, instruction of individuals and groups, and the assessment of learning.
•Awareness and engagement with critical concerns in the discipline and publication record that demonstrates a sustained research focus on Afro-Latinas/os/x.
•A demonstrated record of community involvement related to Afro-Latinas/os/x.

Rank and salary:

Assistant Professor. Salary commensurate with qualifications and experience. The California State University (CSU) provides generous health, retirement and other benefits.

Application Instructions:

Submit the following materials via email to [email protected] by November 1, 2019 and please list search # 28.19 in your subject heading (1) letter of intent/interest, (2) current CV, (3) sample of scholarly papers, (4) teaching philosophy regarding pedagogical approaches that address Afro-Latinidad, (5) description of research interests, (6) statement on how your teaching and scholarship align with the Latina/Latino Studies Department’s commitment to fostering an inclusive and diverse academic community, (7) letters of recommendation from three references. Teaching evaluations will be requested at a later date.

Review of applications will continue until the position is filled.

San Francisco State is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate against persons on the basis of race, religion, color, ancestry, age, disability, genetic information, gender, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, medical condition, National origin, sex, sexual orientation, covered veteran status, or any other protected status. Reasonable accommodations will be provided for qualified applicants with disabilities who self-disclose by contacting the Senior Human Resources Manager.

Above text adapted from webpage.

Caribbean events and panels at the Brooklyn Book Festival 2019

Brooklyn Book Festival
16-23 September 2019
http://www.brooklynbookfestival.org/

Below are a list of Caribbean-related events and panels before and during the Brooklyn Book Festival on Sunday, 22 September. The list may be incomplete. Events are listed in chronological order.

All events free unless otherwise noted. Continue reading Caribbean events and panels at the Brooklyn Book Festival 2019