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Tuesday, November 12th from 5-6:30pm
Humanities Commons
Law Professor Kevin Woodson will share insights from his book, The Black Ceiling: How Race Still Matters in the Elite Workplace. Based on interviews with more than 100 Black attorneys, investment bankers, and management consultants, the book identifies new obstacles to equity and inclusion that undermine the careers of many Black professionals and workers from other marginalized groups. Woodson will explain these problems and discuss some of the steps that workers, allies, and employers can take to help address them.
Join the Africana Studies program in welcoming LaToya Gray-Sparks, Community Outreach Coordinator/Department of Historic Resources, and Shekinah Mitchell, Director, Neighborhood Engagement/Bon Secours, to present and discuss black neighborhoods and space(s) within Richmond.
The event will be in Weinstein Hall, room 314, on Thursday, October 31, 2024 from 10:30-11:45am.
Much of the academic and public discourse about black neighborhoods surrounds the structural and systemic forces that erode black neighborhoods. However, this discussion will also center on the joy and beauty of these spaces (in the past and present) as well as the future and possibilities of black neighborhoods. A Q & A from students and attendees will follow.
Students for the first time are taking courses in the new Africana Studies program at the University of Richmond.
“The push for this program was strong, and students can now major, minor, and receive degrees in Africana Studies,” said Ernest McGowen, the program’s coordinator. “It is a great opportunity to direct one’s studies toward their interests and fulfill our liberal arts mission.”
McGowen and other faculty members collaborated with students to create the program, following a student-driven proposal for UR to offer Africana Studies as an academic option.
The Africana Studies program launched with interdisciplinary courses and programming in the humanities, arts, and social sciences. The program explores the complex socio-political landscapes, economic structures, and cultural traditions that shape, impact, and stem from the African diaspora.
Carol Summers, Samuel Chiles Mitchell-Jacob Billikopf Professor of History and Global Studies, presented "Housewives and Thrift in the 1940s, from Britain to Australia" at the "Making, Spending, Saving: Women and Money in Australasia" Symposium.
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Carol Summers, Samuel Chiles Mitchell-Jacob Billikopf Professor of History and Global Studies, presented "'No one else can do your duty': War Savings Propaganda and Practices of Australian Citizenship,1939-46" at the 43rd Australian Historical Association Conference.
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Jillean McCommons, assistant professor of history and Africana studies, was awarded the 2024-2025 Wilma Dykeman "Faces of Appalachia" Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the Appalachian Studies Association to support her book manuscript on Black Appalachian activism in the 1960s and 1970s.
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Matthew Oware, Irving May Professor of Human Relations, published the chapter "Battle Rap: An Exploration of Competitive Rhyming in Hip Hop" in: African Battle Traditions of Insult. African Histories and Modernities.
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History and Africana studies professor Jillean McCommons is quoted.
In the fall semester of 2020, the University of Richmond faculty overwhelmingly voted to create an Africana Studies program. This was a milestone in a grassroots undertaking begun by students during the spring of 2020. It was guided by skilled faculty and grown in alliance with alumni, staff, and community members seeking an intellectual space within UR in which critical analysis of blackness could take place.
Africana Studies is an academic concentration that critically examines the African diaspora from multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives. Through a wide variety of courses and programming in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, the Program explores the complex socio-political landscapes, economic structures, and cultural traditions that shape, impact, and stem from the African diaspora.
Africana Studies considers how “blackness,” as a racial construct, and the concept of race itself influence and are constitutive of the modern world’s development. A multilayered intellectual enterprise, the Program’s interrogations begin not with race as an assumed concept but as a site of profound epistemological and ontological meaning-making that must be considered in relation to gender, class, nation, ethnicity, religion, and sexuality.
Faculty and students interested in Africana Studies come from a diverse range of backgrounds. The Program serves people from a range of varied ethnic, racial, gender, sexual orientation, economic status, and ideological spectrums as it strives to foster inclusion and equity. Program participants bring to the field a depth of skills and breadth of disciplinary strengths. As such, the program serves as an intellectual center and touchstone for those interested in using innovative avenues of theoretical and empirical investigation to explore the African diaspora.
Designed to provide curriculum that includes broad humanistic and social science traditions as well as extensive social and behavioral theoretical foundations as intrinsic components of study, the Program aims to provide students with interdisciplinary knowledge, skills, and competencies. Through well-designed courses and collaborations with community partners, it engages students inside and outside the classroom.
The Africana Studies Program prepares students for a wide range of academic and professional fields relevant to public, private, and civil-society sector careers. The interdisciplinary nature of Africana Studies allows for a rich and challenging course of inquiry, benefiting students with interests in history, policy, culture, language, law, foreign affairs, visual and performing arts, and education, among other fields. A major or minor in this area will provide an invaluable foundation in critical thinking, research, writing, and analysis; skills that form the core of a liberal arts education.
There are no limits to what students can do with an Africana Studies degree. The Africana Studies Program formally launched in the fall of 2022. Join us.