Africana Studies is an incredibly rich field
that has generated
some of the broadest interdisciplinary scholarship
in the academy today.
This is a field of study
in which the experiences, the ideas, the cultures, the life, and lives really
of people of Africa and African descent are examined seriously and rigorously.
Studies in history, politics and theory, literary
expressive cultures, and gender and sexuality studies
bring those areas of scholarship in conversation
with questions around history and theory
and also new modes of delivering this scholarship
in terms of literary and expressive cultures.
Our curriculum is critical here on the graduate crew.
The fact that we can have the kind of students we've had over the years,
I don't have to teach anybody who doesn't want to be in my class.
And it makes for a very special kind of chemistry and interaction.
Research to performance method is a process
whereby playwrights either conduct independent research
or they are paired up with a scholar in a certain area.
And they create a play that is based upon research.
My experience especially with Rites and Reason Theatre
has taught me the importance of having a space
to gather with people and to engage in
critical thinking and community building and all of these ideas.
Without that space
for that kind of work, you're really lost.
Conversations in Africana
with Michael Thelwell, Chinua Achebe, and John Edgar Wideman.
I felt like I was in a room of
brilliance where every word that came out of their mouths
was so thoughtfully crafted.
When we actually changed the name
from African American Studies to Africana Studies,
we had in mind this dialogue
between Afro-America, Africa, the Caribbean, Afro-Brazil.
The world belongs to
all the people of the world.
And that, no,
no group
can get up and say,
we are the world. The rest is nothing.
I think that there is a
great sense of sharing in the department
in which everybody's voice is valuable
and each perspective is valuable.
Africana Studies has made me think about not only what's being said
but how it's being said.
It was in taking a class, Freedom and African Political Thought,
that really just blew the top off of
what I thought thinking could be like.
The great events we've just completed
is the SNCC Symposium,
celebrating the years of the founding of SNCC,
bringing in
veterans from all over the country
to talk about their experiences.
The beauty of being human
is that the noises you make
are possibly understood by people around you
and they reverberate
and they're what connect us to other human beings.
And that's a place I would always start.
The students, being able
to go as deeply as possible into serious questions
but to do so with fresh eyes.
Those gifts and talents in such an interdisciplinary
and electric place
enhances the kind of knowledge that we produce
and maintains the tradition of Africana Studies.