We Are Here.
AND WE’VE BEEN HERE! Celebrating 20 years of academic service!
Cover Art by Airianna O’Donohue
Message from the Chair W
Dr. Julie Moody-Freeman Acting Chair, Department of African & Black Diaspora Studies
elcome to the Fall 2022 issue of our newsletter We Are Here. I am acting as chair of the Department of African and Black Diaspora Studies (ABD) while Dr. Amor Kohli is on leave as a 2022-2023 President’s Diversity Fellow. I am happy to welcome three new faculty members in the department: Dr. Symone A. Johnson, an Assistant Professor of African and Black Diaspora Studies; Dr. Nino Rodriguez, a Post-Doctoral Humanities Fellow in Comparative Race and Ethnicity Studies through the Social Transformation Research Collective; and Dr. Ashley Stone, the 2022-2023 Ida B. Wells-Barnett Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow. Please check out each faculty member’s spotlight and winter class descriptions in this issue of our newsletter.
Several of our faculty, affiliated faculty, and advisory board members have produced major scholarly achievements that I would like to share with you. First, I would like to congratulate Dr. Amor Kohli on the publication of his book A Beat Beyond: Selected Prose of Major Jackson (2022). To learn more about this publication, please click on the following link to hear Dr. Kohli and Major Jackson in conversation: https://youtu.be/NbK77i1Rixs Congratulations also goes out to Dr. Francesca Royster, a past chair of African and Black Diaspora Studies and a member of our advisory board, on the publication of her book Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions (2022). Listen to Dr. Royster on NPR discussing her book: https://www.npr. org/2022/10/19/1130026658/author-francesca-royster-on-her-new-book-black-country-music Dr. Chernoh Sesay, former Acting Chair and a member of ABD’s advisory board, is the recipient of a 2022-2023 Faculty Research Fellowship from the Social Transformation Research Collaborative, funded by a Mellon Foundation grant. Congratulations to Dr. Sesay as he uses this year’s paid leave to work on his book project, Black Boston and the Making of African-American Freemasonry: Leadership, Religion, and Fraternalism in Early America. Dr. Lori Pierce, an Associate Professor in ABD, is a recipient of a 2022-2023 Faculty Professional Development Fellowship from the Social Transformation Research Collaborative. Congratulations to Dr. Pierce for her six-month professional development fellowship, which provided time off to work on her project “DNA Forensics and Genealogy.” Congratulations also to Dr. Jaqueline Lazú, affiliated faculty and a member of ABD’s advisory board, on receiving a 2022-2023 President’s Diversity Fellowship. Finally, I want to extend my thanks to Kathryn Douglas, ABD’s Administrative Assistant, and Arianna O’Donohue, ABD’s student assistant, for editing this issue of our newsletter. 2
African African and and Black Black Diaspora Diaspora Studies Studies Major Major & & Minor Minor Requirements Requirements
ABD Major-13 courses + ABD 100: Introduction to African & Black Diaspora Studies + ABD 200: Africa: Peoples, Cultures, Ideas & Movements + ABD 206: Afro-Caribbean & Afro-Latin America: Peoples,Cultures, Ideas & Movements + ABD 208: African America: Peoples,Cultures, Ideas & Movements + ABD 391: Senior Capstone + Four 300-level ABD Courses + Four Electives (200-level or above)
ABD Minor- 6 courses + ABD 100: Introduction to African & Black Diaspora Studies + Choice of: ABD 200: Africa: Peoples, Cultures, Ideas & Movement ABD 206: Afro-Caribbean Afro-Latin America: Peoples,Cultures, Ideas & Movements or ABD 208: African America: Peoples,Cultures, Ideas & Movements + Four ABD electives (seniors may take the ABD Capstone in partial fulfillment of this requirement) 3
Winter 2023 Course Offerings
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Winter Quarter Course Spotlight
Anthropology Anthropology of of Africans have been on the move since the dawn of humanity. Anthropology is one discipline that can inform us about the presence and influence of Africans throughout the world. Topics include: the history of anthropology and its role in the construction of race and modernity; patterns of migration and displacement of African peoples across the world and their socio-cultural implications and the evolution of the Black anthropological tradition.
Dr. Symone Johnson
the African Diaspora
Blacks & Love Dr. Nino Rodriguez This course employs cultural criticism, race and ethnic studies, and women’s and gender studies to examine the visual representations of blacks and love in art, film, and literature. The course begins by examining the construction of race in eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentiethcentury European and American philosophy and body politic and with an examination of art, art history, film, and literature. Section two explores the definition of love; it examines Christian definitions of love as well as secular definitions from black intellectuals, cultural critics, and scholars. Section three examines a range of genres in search of progressive, transformative, positive images that depict blacks in loving relationships, rediscovering what it means to love oneself and others in spite of/because of our human differences (in race/ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality).
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African and Black Diaspora Studies Faculty Biographies
Dr. Nino Rodriguez is a Post-Doctoral Humanities Fellow in Comparative Race and Ethnicity Studies through the Social Transformation Research Collective (STRC) at DePaul. During his time at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign (UIUC), Dr. Nino was trained as a justice-oriented scholar-practitioner with a concentration in Diversity & Equity of Education. As a practitioner, Dr. Nino uses his knowledge, skills, and approaches to support the evaluation, development, and implementation of restorative justice praxis (policies, programs, and practices) aimed at fostering equity in the black community, spaces that black people navigate, and throughout the African Diaspora. In addition, Dr. Nino’s scholarship focuses on the liberation of black males via the deconstruction of black manhood and masculinity with the intent of positioning black males to redefine what it means to be a black man in America. Currently, he focuses on amplifying the voices of adolescent black males (ages 13 to 18) to operationalize their views and experiences during the development of “wellintentioned” programs, policies, and practices created to “serve them” at the community, state, and national levels. 6
STRC Post-Doctoral Humanities Fellow
Dr. Nino Rodriguez
Ida B. Wells-Barnett Post-Doctoral Fellow
African and and Black Black Diaspora Diaspora Studies Studies African Faculty Biographies Biographies Faculty
Dr. Ashley Stone Dr. Ashley Stone (she/her/hers) is the 2022-2023 Ida B. Wells-Barnett Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in the Department of African and Black Diaspora Studies at DePaul University. She holds a B.A. in Communication from the University of Illinois at Chicago, an M.A. in Sociology from DePaul University, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Central Florida. Dr. Stone’s research and teaching areas include race, gender, sociological theory, and higher education. Her current research project examines the reproduction of knowledge by exploring the factors that contribute to the inclusion and exclusion of the scholarship of classical Black women social theorists in graduate-level sociology curricula. Her scholarship has been published in anthologies and peer-reviewed journals, including the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity; Women, Gender, and Families of Color; and Sociological Inquiry. In addition to her publications, Dr. Stone has been invited to speak on a variety of platforms about race, education, and non-violence. She has received numerous awards for her efforts in teaching, research, and social justice.
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Faculty Spotlight and as a former performer, this really excites me! I’m looking forward to working with performing art students and attending their productions. I can’t wait to see what kinds of fresh perspectives Dean Martine will bring to the school. I’m also thrilled to be at a university with such a wonderful museum! There’s so much opportunity for creative, interdisciplinary learning and teaching at DePaul. That’s what I’m all about! I also intend to work with the Steans Center to develop classes that are community-based. I plan to teach one about Restorative Justice that would be both theoretical/ philosophical and practical, and I’d invite community partners in to share about the work they do in the city. I’m also developing a Chicago Quarter course that would incorporate neighborhood bike tours as a way of learning the city geography while exploring subjects like urban environmentalism, community building and mutual aid, African American and Black Diasporic spiritualities, and decolonial politics
Dr. Symone Johnson What drew you to DePaul? My love for the city of Chicago! I identify with the radical politics and creative energy of the city. Since I moved here two years ago, I’ve gotten involved in local organizing as a way of getting more intimately connected with the people and learning to navigate the city. I’ve also been learning more about my family ties to the city which traces back for three generations. I love DePaul especially because it feels like a liberal arts community, the people are so welcoming, and there is a vibrant queer community here! Many of the folks I know through organizing and other social groups in the city also have ties to the university (many are alum) which speaks to how rooted DePaul is in the culture and history of the city. I’m excited to be a part of the community.
You recently received your Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Notre Dame, how do you view African and Black Diaspora studies through an Anthropological lens? The way I see Anthropology is very Black. I was first introduced to the field at Spelman College where I took Dr. Ashanté Reese’s Introduction to Anthropology class in my final semester. She taught from the perspective of black folklore studies and the black feminist anthropological tradition. We discussed at length writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Irma McClaurin, A. Lynn Bolles, and Leith Mullings who I understood to be as much a part of the Anthropological canon as Franz Boas, Bronislaw Malinowski, or Margaret Mead. From their work, I learned how ethnographic methods, or in Hurston’s words, the “spyglass of anthropology” can be applied to examine our social conditions and to understand how we as Black people use our creative capacities for survival. For me, Black Studies and Anthropology are inseparable. I just do Black Studies anthropologically!
What do you look forward to most during your time at DePaul? In addition to supporting the growth of ABD, I’m really excited about being a part of the artistic communities here! I’ve been learning a lot about the history of The Theatre School as a training ground for some of Chicagoland’s premier performing artists, 8
You co-wrote the article, “We All We Got: Black Urban Ecologies of Care and Mutual Aid” which was published this Quarter, how has Black studies influenced your writing?
For ABD 229: Race, Science, and White Supremacy we’ll be focusing on the scientific origins of the concept of race, the medicalization of the body, and the historical struggle of traditional folk medicine against the dominance of Western biomedicine and the medical industrial complex. One of our guiding texts will be Hans Baer’s Biomedicine and Alternative Healing Systems in America which provides a history of medical pluralism in the U.S. We’ll also spend time covering the marginalization and continued practice of Black American healing traditions and their connections to Afro-Diasporic and Indigenous scientific systems.
I tend to agree with Dr. Robin D.G. Kelley’s view of Black Studies as being powered by a tradition of radical imagination, creative expression, and commitment to revolutionary change. In Black Studies, and in our everyday lives and practices, we put our imaginations to use to both challenge the status quo and create new worlds based on our collective values and visions for freedom. Dr. Reese and I explore this very idea in our article. Mutual aid at its root is a social-political-economic practice that empowers people to work together as communities to lead self-determined lives that are free and sovereign and critical of heteropatriarchal capitalist white supremacist logics of individualism, austerity, domination, and social hierarchization. It is about building relationships locally and developing plans of action for grassroots solutions to our most pressing issues—anti-Black violence, housing and food insecurity, under and unemployment, corrupt education systems—rather than depending on trickle-down solutions from the elite. This is revolutionary work because the more we develop our community relationships, the more we actively care for each other, the more we demand from our local governments, the more free we can become. Mutual Aid is freedom work, and Black Studies is all about that life.
How has anthropological study changed over time with regard to Black Studies, if at all? Anthropology is notorious for its contributions to colonialism. From its inception in Britain and the U.S., there has always been this fixation on the study of the African and Indigenous “Other”, ultimately for the sake of exploiting that knowledge to advance imperialist projects. It was an objectifying anthropology, a paternalistic anthropology that was about the Black subject, rather than of the Black subject. That began to shift as more Black gained more prominence in Anthropology and Sociology. Researchers and writers like W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, John Langston Gwaltney, St. Clair Drake and others revolutionized the ethnographic study of Black people in the U.S. and beyond. They helped to debunk racist notions of Black biological, moral, and cultural inferiority and explored the richness and sophistication of Black culture and language. This is a tradition that is still carried on today. Anthropology for and by peoples of the African diaspora is deeply political in that it is decolonial and celebrates the diversity and complexity of the world’s peoples, a direct challenge to a traditionally essentialist and extractive scientific enterprise. Though there is still much work to be done, I think Afro-Diasporic peoples and other peoples of the Global South have been instrumental in the transformation of the field toward more visionary and life-affirming ends.
Can you give us some insight into the classes you’ll be teaching this upcoming winter quarter? In ABD 214: Anthropology of the African Diaspora we’ll be reading and discussing topics like the history of Anthropology and its role in the construction of race and modernity, patterns of migration and displacement of African peoples across the world and their socio-cultural implications, and the evolution of Black and AfroDiasporic anthropological traditions. Our historical and theoretical discussions will be brought to life by a reading of Jemima Pierre’s brilliant ethnography The Predicament of Blackness: Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race. 9
met amor phosis
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Written By Airianna O’Donohue
he moment you were placed into my arms my breath was whisked away and tucked neatly into your tiny palm your hair, that held moonlight within each tress, curled neatly against the crown of your head I watched quietly listening to the rise and fall of your breath as your nostrils flared and your coos hushed I brought my finger to your gilded cheek in response your eyes fluttered open like a morpho menelaus as it languidly flaps through the dense canopy of a dew ridden forest I saw my past and your future in those little eyes grade school microcosms as kids play grown-up you’ll get to be either the dog or the maid, and they’ll taunt you pull your hair and teach you to hate your curls bring you to resent your gilded skin you’ll come home and lay in our mothers lap she’ll rub your back as you cry, I feel a delicate tug as you grasp my finger and as I’m ushered to the present, you smile one of those gummy grins mouth full of bitter metal, I smile back cursing my momentary lapse into the past remembering that you are only just exiting your cocoon The future is not predetermined. I can teach you to love your curls I will ensure you take pride in your skin I’ll show you how to spread your wings if you fall I’ll be there to cradle you in my arms just as I am now 10
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AFRICAN AND BLACK DIASPORA STUDIES DePaul University Schmitt Academic Center, Suite 551 2320 N. Kenmore Avenue Chicago, IL 60614 Phone: 773.325.7510 Email: ABD@depaul.edu