News in 2008 for African & African American Studies   Current...  ViewAll  Archive 

• April 16, 2008 - In Conversation with Author Stephane Dunn
  
  , 2008/03/27 17:41:34

  Author of Baad Bitches and Sassy Supermamas:
  Race, Gender & Sexuality in Black Power Action Fantasies (University of Illinois Press).
  About Baad Bitches and Sassy Supermamas:
  This lively study unpacks the intersecting racial, sexual, and gender politics underlying the representations of racialized bodies, masculinities, and femininities in early 1970s black action films, with particular focus on the representation of black femininity. Stephane Dunn explores the typical, sexualized, subordinate positioning of women in low-budget blaxploitation action narratives as well as more seriously radical films like Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and The Spook Who Sat by the Door, in which black women are typically portrayed as trifling "bitches" compared to the supermacho black male heroes. The terms "baad bitches" and "sassy supermamas" signal the reversal of this positioning with the emergence of supermama heroines in the few black action films in the early 1970s that featured self-assured, empowered, and tough (or "baad") black women as protagonists: Cleopatra Jones, Coffy, and Foxy Brown.
   

• April 15, 2008 - AAAS Spring Talks
  Professors Thavolia Glymph and Bayo Holsey
  , 2008/04/03 12:25:11

  
  Tuesday, April 15, 2008
  1pm
  225 Friedl Bldg.
  Professors Thavolia Glymph (AAAS) and Bayo Holsey (AAAS) discuss their forthcoming books.
  
  "Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household" (Glymph)
  
  "Routes of Remembrance: Refashioning the Slave Trade in Ghana" (Holsey)
   

• April 09, 2008 - Poetry Reading and Discussion with Professor Ed Pavlic
  
  , 2008/03/28 11:17:24

  Award - Winning poet Ed Pavlic reads from his new collection of poetry, "Winners Have Yet to be Announced: A Song for Donny Hathaway."
  
  About Ed Pavlic.....
  Ed Pavlic is associate professor of English and director of the MFA/PhD program in creative writing at the University of Georgia.
  His previous books of poems are Labors Lost Left Unfinished and Paraph of Bone & Other Kinds of Blue, which was selected by Adrienne Rich for the American Poetry Review /Honickman First Book Prize.
  He has also published a scholarly work,Crossroads Modernism, on African American literary culture.
  
   

• April 08, 2008 - AAAS Spring Talks
  Margaret Lee (African and Afro-American Studies)
  
  , 2008/03/28 11:17:56

  
  Discussion with......... Margaret Lee (University of North Carolina)
  The 21st Century Scramble for Africa
  
   

• April 01, 2008 - AAAS Spring Talks
  Charmaine Royal
  
  , 2008/03/28 11:16:54

  Tuesday, April 1, 2008
  1pm
  225 Ernestine Friedl Bldg.
  Charmaine Royal (IGSP)
  Genomics, Social Identity, and Health
  
   

• February 29, 2008 - Pre-Concert Conversation
  , 2008/01/16 17:46:12

  
  5:30pm
  Soul Legend Booker T. Jones with Professor Anthony Kelley
  Location: TBD  

• February 22, 2008 - Professor Mark Anthony Neal in Conversation
  , 2008/01/16 17:47:22

  
  7pm
  In Conversation:  Hip-Hop Sampling Soul
  Auditorium at the Nasher Museum of Art
  Quest Love of the Roots and
  9th Wonder
  
   

• February 21, 2008 - "No Sacrifice Too Great"
  
  , 2008/02/18 17:10:05

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill extends an invitation
  Faculty and students UNC will host: Black History Month Lecture w/ Dr. James D. Anderson The lecture on the value of education in black culture will take place on Thursday, February 21, 2008 at Wilson Library on the campus of UNC at 7pm.
  
   

• February 18, 2008 - Open House & Celebration of New Home: George Lipsitz Lecture, followed by program and reception
  
  , 2008/02/19 11:14:52

  President Richard Brodhead and Provost Peter Lange invite you to a lecture and reception in celebration of the opening of the new home of the Departments of African & African American Studies and Cultural Anthropology, the Programs in Literature and Latino/a Studies, the Institute for Critical US Studies, and the Duke Human Rights Center. This event takes place on Monday, February 18, 2008 4:00 - 5:30 p.m.
  
  A lecture will take place in the Nelson Music Room inside the East Duke Building followed by a brief program and reception in the Science Building (formerly the Duke Art Museum) with tours of the Science Building.
  
   

• February 08, 2008 - Pre-Concert Conversation
  , 2008/01/16 17:39:58

  
  5:30pm
  Soul Legend............   Mavis Staples along with Professor Tim Tyson
  Location: TBD
  
   

• February 07, 2008 - Artist Exhibition and Conversation Opening
  , 2008/01/16 17:37:04

  
  7pm
  Nasher Museum of Art Presents:  Exhibition Opening
  & Artist Conversation with
  Barkley L. Hendricks: BIRTH OF THE COOL
  with Professor Rick Powell
  
   

• February 05, 2008 - Talk: The Life and Times of James "Thunder" Early
  , 2008/01/16 17:35:35

  
  7pm
  Professor Mark Anthony Neal
  Auditorium at the Center for Documentary Studies
  A Meditation on Soul and the Chitlin' Circuit
  
   

• International Justice/ Asymmetrical Justice?
  Adrienne A Moore, 2008/10/30 12:36:42

  
  AAAS Brown Bag Series with Professor Stephen Smith
  
  October 29, 2008
  225 Friedl Building
  12:00 pm
  (light lunch provided)
  
  A conversation about international justice in Africa, with regard to special tribunals, the International Criminal Court, and the question of "asymmetrical justice."
  
  Professor Stephen W. Smith will begin with a brief account of his recent testimony at the Charles Taylor trial in the Hague, where Taylor stands charged with responsibility for serious international crimes.
  
  Other panelists include Louisa Lombard and Jatin Dua (Cultural Anthropolgy).  

• John Hope Franklin Scholars Ceremony and Reception
  , 2008/04/15 16:07:28

  
  The John Hope Franklin Scholars Program at
  Duke University will hold a graduation and reception to honor the scholars.
  April 26, 2008.
  4pm - 115 Ernestine Friedl Building
   

• AAAS Graduation Ceremony and Reception
  , 2008/04/11 14:01:13

  
  Honoring 2008 Graduating Majors, Minors and
  Graduate Student Certificate Recipients
  Friday, May 9, 2008
  2:00-4:00 PM
  Front Lawn of the West Duke Building East Campus
  
  Reception immediately following
  115 Ernestine Friedl Building
  
   

• Vincent Brown, Associate Professor at Harvard University visits Duke
  
  , 2008/03/18 17:32:37

  A talk with Vincent Brown, Associate Professor at Harvard
  The Afterlives of an African Rebellion
  March 21, 2008
  12:00 Noon
  229 Carr Building
  
   

• Mary McLeod Bethune Writing Awards
  
  , 2008/03/18 16:32:00

  The Bethune Writing Awards recognize excellence in student research and writing in the disciplines of African and African American Studies.
  Click Here for Application Form
  
  [more]  

• The Soul Cinema Series at the Mary Lou Williams Center
  
  , 2008/02/08 15:14:41

  The Soul Cinema Series features films that examine Soul, not simply as a musical genre, but as a cultural phenomenon within America from the late 1950s until the beginning of the 1980s.
  
  The films featured reflect Soul as part of the everyday realities of black folk, both as it was experienced during the Soul era and how it is re-imagined through the lens of nostalgia.
  
  1/29- The Spook Who Sat by the Door (directed by Ivan Dixon)- 7pm
  
  In order to improve his standing with Black voters, a White Senator starts a campaign for the CIA to recruit Black agents. However, all are graded on a curve and doomed to fail, save for a soft-spoken veteran named Dan Freeman. After grueling training in guerrilla warfare, clandestine operations and unarmed combat, he is assigned a meager job as the CIA's token Black employee. After five years of racist and stereotyped treatment by his superiors, he quietly resigns to return to his native Chicago to work for a social services agency...by day. By night, he trains a street gang to be the vanguard in an upcoming race war, using all that the CIA has taught him. (1973, 102 minutes)
  
  2/12- Cotton Comes to Harlem (directed by Ossie Davis, Jr.)- 7pm
  
  Based on Chester Himes's novel, this film marked actor-writer Ossie Davis's directing debut. Godfrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques play Himes's volatile police detectives, Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, who are on the trail of white men who pulled an armed stickup at a Back to Africa rally in Harlem. The money belongs to the poor people who paid for a chance to return to the motherland--but was it really a stickup? Or is the flashy preacher at the center of the Back to Africa movement (Calvin Lockhart) involved in a scam to rip off his own people? (1970, 90 minutes)
  
  2/19- WattStax (directed by Mel Stuart)- 7pm
  
  They called Wattstax the "black Woodstock," but there are many differences between that seminal hippie event and the 1972 concert documented in this 30th-anniversary special-edition reissue. Woodstock was all about peace, love, and music. Wattstax, held three years later in Los Angeles, had those elements as well; but as this 103-minute film reminds us, it was a more socio-politically charged event, with its emphasis on black pride and the simple opportunity for African Americans to assert that, in opening speaker Jesse Jackson's words, "I am somebody." (1972, 102 minutes)
  
  3/4- Claudine (directed by John Berry)- 7pm
  
  Diahann Carroll stars as Claudine, single mother of six children in Harlem and a maid working for under-the-table wages. Forever worried that her white caseworker will discover her meager, outside income (thus eliminating meager government benefits), Carroll earned an Academy Award nomination for her performance; Carroll and James Earl Jones earned Golden Globe nominations. Featured soundtrack performed by Gladys Knight and the Pips and produced by Curtis Mayfield. (1974, 92 minutes)
  
  3/18- Baadasssss! (directed by Mario Van Peebles)- 7pm
  
  In 1971, Mario Van Peebles's father, Melvin Van Peebles, made the X-rated blaxploitation movie "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song," starring himself as a bordello stud performer who kills two white cops and manages to escape. "Baadasssss!" is Mario's layered re-creation of the making of "Sweetback" and the convulsive life around the production. He plays his father, appropriating Melvin Van Peebles's body, his attitudes, his actions, and his treatment of his family. The result is a complex homage. (2003, 108 minutes)
  
  3/25- Talk to Me (directed by Kasi Lemmons)- 7pm
  
  The story of radio and TV personality “Petey” Greene, is a rich evocation of Washington, D.C. and much of urban Black America in those tense years when the Civil Rights Movement broke down entrenched barriers of segregation, when the Rev. Martin Luther King was assassinated, and when inner-city neighborhoods were set ablaze by rioters in the streets.(2007, 119 Minutes)
  
  4/1- Crooklyn (directed by Spike Lee)- 7pm
  
  Spike Lee's semiautobiographical film about the good and bad times for a Brooklyn family in the 1970s has passion and nostalgic good feeling. The centerpiece of the movie is a little girl who views the ups and downs of her parents' experiences and who navigates the life of her neighborhood. (1994, 114 Minutes)  

• AAAS welcomes new faculty member to department
  , 2008/02/14 10:28:51

  
  JENNIFER DEVERE BRODY teaches in the fields of African American Studies, performance studies, cultural and visual studies as well as gender/sexuality studies.
  
  She is the author of Impossible Purities: Blackness, Femininity and Victorian Culture (Duke UP, 1998) and Punctuation: Art, Politics and Play (Duke UP, 2008).
  
  She has been awarded grants from the Ford Foundation, the British Society for Theatre Scholars, and the Monette/Horwitz Trust for Independent Research.
  
  She was the Weinberg College of Visitors Research and Teaching Professor at Northwestern University from 2005-2007. Her work has appeared in Genders, Signs, Callaloo, Theatre Journal, Text and Performance Quarterly and numerous edited volumes.
  
   

• Duke Performances Presents..................
  , 2008/01/16 17:15:06

  
  SOUL POWER: From GOSPEL to GODFATHER
  [more]