News & Events

Archived Events 2013-2014

Kiniwe: Adzogbo Concert

Friday, April 25, 2014 at 8:00 p.m.
Granoff Music Center
20 Talbot Avenue, Tufts University
Medford/Somerville Campus

Featuring: Kiniwe, Tufts African Music Ensemble; Nani Agbeli, director; Agbekor Drum and Dance Society; Saeed Abbas, guest artist; Baobab Youth Group

Admission is free and open to the public.
View press release >

African Studies Workshop: 2014 Conference

Chiefship and the Customary in Contemporary Africa
Friday, April 25, 2014
8:30am-6:30pm
Harvard University
Radcliffe's Knafel Center
Cambridge, MA
Download flyer >
View schedule >
Register here >

The African Studies Workshop culminates each year with a conference event in the spring. The 2014 conference, entitled Chiefship and the Customary in Contemporary Africa, will be held on Friday, April 25, 2014 at the Knafel Center. Registration deadline is April 21, 2014.

Register now >

The scholarly objectives of the conference are to interrogate – to document, analyze, and theorize — changes in the politics, economics, and cultural practices surrounding the institution of chiefship, and of the so-called "customary," under present-day conditions in Africa. We seek to explore the impact of the global economy, liberalization, state transformation, and corporate neocolonialism on these institutions, along with the rise of new forms of sovereignty, new religious geographies, and new identities in local life-worlds. In many, if not all, contexts, traditional authorities retain significant popular allegiance. In many, they have also become agents less of the state than of overseas businesses; in some, they have become absentee rentier capitalists on their own account; in others they have pushed legislative agendas that violate liberal democratic constitutions in the name of the sovereignty of custom and the authority of their office. Older metaphors deployed to describe "traditional authority," from Gluckman's "lowest NCO's of empire" to Mamdani's "tinpot dictators" – whether or not they were empirically persuasive at the time, now seem more to simplify and misrepresent than to capture a complex, changing reality.

Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities

Lecture by historian Craig Steven Wilder
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
7:30pm
The Royall House & Slave Quarters
15 George Street
Medford, MA 02155

Many of America's revered colleges and universities were soaked in the sweat, the tears, and sometimes the blood of people of color. The earliest academies proclaimed their mission to Christianize the savages of North America, and played a key role in white conquest. Later, the slave economy and higher education grew up together, each nurturing the other. Slavery funded colleges, built campuses, and paid the wages of professors. Enslaved Americans waited on faculty and students; academic leaders aggressively courted the support of slave owners and slave traders. Significantly, our leading universities, dependent on human bondage, became breeding grounds for the racist ideas that sustained them.

Craig Steven Wilder is professor of American history at MIT, and has taught at Williams College and Dartmouth College. Wilder grew in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood and received his PhD from Columbia University. He is the author of A Covenant with Color and In the Company of Black Men. Copies of Ebony and Ivy will be available for purchase and signing at the event.
Learn more >

Decolonization of Knowledge: Fanon in Black Studies by Lewis R. Gordon, Ph.D.
Thursday, March 27, 2014, 4:30-6:00 p.m.
Pearson 104
View Flyer >

Magdalena Campos-Pons: My Mother Told Me (working title)

Exhibition on view: September 5 - December 15, 2013
Tisch Family Gallery, Tufts University Art Gallery
Public Opening Reception: Thursday, September 12, 2013, 5:30-8:00pm
View flyer >

Tufts Kiniwe concert

Friday, November 22, 2013, 8 PM
Distler Performance Hall
Granoff Music Center
Free, no tickets required
View press release >
View flyer

Transnational-Studies TSI Fall Schedule
(Hosted by Harvard University)
Contact: Charlotte Lloyd (charlottelloyd@fas.harvard.edu)

Tuesday, November 19, 2013
4:00-6:00PM
CGIS South Building, 1730 Cambridge Street, Room S250

"Transnational Health Services Utilization among Immigrants in the United States"
Rocio Calvo, Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Social Work, Boston College
Mary C. Waters, M.E. Zukerman Professor of Sociology, Harvard University
Marie-Laure Mallet, Fulbright Scholar; Fellow in Sociology, Harvard University

Wednesday, November 13, 2013, 6:30pm-8:45pm
City Council Chambers, Medford City Hall
View flyer >

Tuesday, November 12, 2013 from 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM
The Tufts University Art Gallery at the Aidekman Arts Center is proud to present an Artist's Lecture with Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, in conjunction with her exhibition My Mother Told Me.

Tufts' Pan-African Alliance's 44th Annual 'Black Solidarity Day'

Combating Anti-Blackness, What Does It Mean to be In Solidarity?
Monday, November 4, 2013 | 12:00-1:15pm
Lower Campus center patio
Learn more >
Event info >

Discussion and book signing

Clan Cleansing in Somalia
By Lidwien Kapteijns
Thursday, September 26, 2013 | 5:30pm
Mugar 200
Presented by the World Peace Foundation at The Fletcher School
Learn more >

Transnational-Studies TSI Fall Schedule
(Hosted by Harvard University)
Contact: Charlotte Lloyd (charlottelloyd@fas.harvard.edu)

• Tuesday, September 24, 2013
  *Highlighted event: Prof. Katrina Burgess, Tufts University
  4:00-6:00PM
  CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge Street, Room K262
  
  "Unpacking the Diaspora Channel: When Do Migrants Act Politically Back Home?"
  Katrina Burgess, Associate Professor of Political Economy, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
  Discussant: Deepak Lamda Nieves, PhD candidate, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Tuesday October 15, 2013 at 7:30pm
  Africana Film Series
  The First Grader
  Learn more >

• October 15-18, 2013
  Fletcher Africana Club Presents East Africa Week
  Learn more >

• Wednesday October 16 at 6:30
  Social Entrepreneurship in East Africa: Indego Africa
  Swahili Workshop for Beginners
  Learn more >

• Tuesday, October 29, 2013
  4:00-6:00PM
  CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge Street, Room K262
  
  "Transnationlism and the Nation State: A Caribbean Case Study"
  Orlando Patterson, John Cowles Professor of Sociology, Harvard University
  Discussant: Doris Sommer, Ira and Jewell Williams Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and African and African American Studies, Harvard University

News

Boren Scholarships and Fellowships and the African Languages Initiative
Applications for the 2013-2014 David L. Boren Scholarships and Fellowships are now available at www.borenawards.org. Boren Awards provide unique funding opportunities for U.S. undergraduate and graduate students to study in Africa, Asia, Central & Eastern Europe, Eurasia, Latin America, and the Middle East, where they can add important international and language components to their educations. As part of the African Languages Initiative, Boren Scholars and Fellows study one of the following languages at the University of Florida's summer 2013 program prior to commencing their overseas Boren funded programs:

• Akan/Twi
• Hausa
• Swahili
• Wolof
• Yoruba
• Zulu

For a full explanation of the African Languages Initiative, including information on the domestic and overseas programs, or to register for one of the upcoming webinars, visit the website at www.borenawards.org and look under announcements on the left side of the page. You can also contact the Boren Awards staff at boren@iie.org or 1-800-618-NSEP with questions.

Africana Studies Now on SIS
The Africana Studies major is now available to be declared by students in SIS. The SIS major code is AFR – Africana Studies.

For a full explanation of the African Languages Initiative, including information on the domestic and overseas programs, or to register for one of the upcoming webinars, visit the website at www.borenawards.org and look under announcements on the left side of the page. You can also contact the Boren Awards staff at boren@iie.org or 1-800-618-NSEP with questions.

Africana Studies Now on SIS
The Africana Studies major is now available to be declared by students in SIS. The SIS major code is AFR – Africana Studies.

Professor Wins Nigerian Studies Association 2012 Book Award
Professor Peter Probst's book, "Osogbo and the Art of Heritage. Monuments, Deities, and Money" (Indiana University Press 2011) won the Nigerian Studies Association 2012 book award.

Africana Center Book Sign-Out
The Africana Center is pleased to announce the launch of the Book Sign-Out program in fall 2012. This is a new system that will allow students to sign out books from our collection for up to one week through the Africana Center front desk.
Learn more >

Call for Papers