Events

Amal Hassan Fadlalla is Associate Professor of Anthropology, Women’s Studies, and Afroamerican and African studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her research interests and teaching focus on global issues and perspectives related to gender, health, reproduction, diaspora, transnationalism, population, development, and human rights and humanitarianism.  She holds a B.Sc.  and Masters degree in Anthropology from the University of Khartoum, Sudan, and a PhD in Anthropology from Northwestern University, United States. RSVP required.

MAJOR JACKSON is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Absurd Man (2020). His edited volumes include: Best American Poetry 2019, Renga for Obama, and Library of America’s Countee Cullen: Collected Poems. A recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem, Inc., Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Major Jackson has published poems and essays in American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and World Literature Today. He lives in South Burlington, Vermont and is the Richard A. Dennis Professor of English at the University of Vermont. He serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review. 

A talk by Roquinaldo Ferreira, Henry Charles Lea Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania.

The Portuguese colony of Angola grew out of a settlement established at Luanda Bay in 1576. From its inception, Portuguese Angola existed to profit from the transatlantic slave trade, which drove the colony’s economy for the next 300 years. Using the city’s eighteenth-century baptism records, Penn Professor Roquinaldo Ferreira, who specializes in African, Atlantic, and Brazilian history, reconstructs fictional kinship ties created by free and unfree people. Known as compadrazgo networks or mutually supportive relationships, these ties reveal a rich portrait of social life in Luanda under colonialism at the height of the slave trade, including how Christianity, community-building, and other African strategies helped people avoid deportation to the Americas.

The 2020 Kislak Symposium looks at the flourishing of Black women writers as a cultural force in late twentieth century America. Combining panels, roundtables, talks, and readings, scholars and artists will examine topics ranging from activist writing and the emergence of Black Queer Studies to theorizing the archive and the role of bibliographies in the making of collections.

The symposium seeks to inspire new work in the discipline while honoring the important work that has already been done on many of the authors in the collection. Among the confirmed speakers are Cheryl Clarke, Farah Jasmine Griffin (Columbia), and Cheryl Wall (Rutgers), along with the exhibition co-curators and Penn graduate students, Destiny Crockett and Kiana Murphy. The collector Joanna Banks will be joining the conversation.

Registration for the symposium is appreciated.

CHRISTIANITY, RACE, AND THE HAUNTING OF BIOMEDICAL SCIENCE, TERENCE KEEL (UCLA)

The idea that so-called races reflect inherent biological differences between social groups has been a prominent aspect of Western thought since at least the Enlightenment. While there have been moments of refuting this way of thinking—most notably, the social constructionist thesis emerging as a dominant framework in the aftermath of WWII—fixed biological conceptions of race haunt new genetic technologies, where race is thought to be measurable at the molecular level. Keel argues that the resilience of this naturalized understanding of race may stem less from overtly political motives on the part of scientists and more from our inherited theological traditions that predate the Enlightenment and continue to shape and limit the intellectual horizon of scientific reasoning.

The Power of the Unsaid: Counter-Hegemonic Knowledge in Contemporary Afro-Cuban Arts Co-sponsored by Latin American and Latino Studies. Refreshments will be served. Registration required.

A talk by Premilla Nadasen, Professor of History, Barnard College.

Debates on the idea of care have come to dominate scholarship and activism on domestic work and social reproduction. What role did the struggle for rights and inclusion among African American household workers in the 1970s play in current debates? And how does naming this labor as “care” reveal a shift from Fordist (assembly line) ideas of workers’ rights towards one that equates human worth with social need? Widely published on feminism, alternative labor movements, and grassroots organizing, Professor Nadasen considers the negative implications of this shift on the struggle for dignity and human rights, offering a way to rethink care.

Join us for our annual jazz and spoken word event. Enjoy the sweet sounds of "Reference Point" featuring Glenn Bryan and M.C. Diane Leslie. Theme for this year is Harlem Nights so come dressed for the roaring 20’s!  Inn at Penn, 3600 Sansom Street; (African-American Resource Center).

Decolonizing the Narrative is a documentary reflection on African artistry and design, and the impact of the colonial narrative on exhibiting material culture in Western museums. We tell the story of how the objects arrived at the Penn Museum, and why viewers are invited to consider these objects as we turn the exhibition back onto the Penn Museum itself. In our efforts to tell a different refreshed narrative we are helped by several contemporary artists. In Decolonizing the Narrative, Tukufu Zuberi, the lead curator, takes us on a journey with museum directors and curators from African institutions, and contemporary artist in Africa and the African Diaspora as they respond to the redesign of the Africa Galleries at the Penn Museum.

This program is based on the premise that thehistorical use and leverage of sexual violence against people of color in theUnited States, and the present-day existence of racist institutions such as thecriminal justice system, severely impact the ability of communities of color toprevent sexual and relationship violence while working towards accountability andhealing when it occurs. It will attempt to answer the questions of how might people of color be adversely affected by this conundrum and how might we identify new ways to work towards accountability? Sponsored by Penn Violence Prevention.