Black Studies: A Life Story

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Discussion

Abstract

This year’s conference theme invites deep and critical reflection on what it means —what it has
meant— to do Black Studies since the Council’s founding 50 years ago. Our discipline has
witnessed and survived various historical, political, and institutional pressures. From the
radical grassroots demand for Black Studies in the 1960’s and 1970’s, through the process of
institutionalization and what we may call “predatory inclusion,” to the extreme repression so
many departments are mobilizing against today, Black Studies remains. We survive – as
people, as scholars, as departments, and as a field.
With this history in mind and as institutional hosts, the Department of Africana Studies at the
University of Cincinnati will convene a roundtable featuring all the faculty members in our
department – across rank, specialization, and experience – to reflect on Black Studies as a life
journey. We will share our varied points of entry to the discipline and, in turn, the impact our
teaching, research, and service has had on the field. We will discuss our individual and
collective commitment to academic excellence and social responsibility and we will honestly
consider the challenges that emerge from such a commitment. We will review the journey from
graduate school to near retirement and how the ways we ask and answer questions has evolved
in a half century. We will offer up words on who we are as a department and where we see
ourselves going, particularly in such a hostile political moment. We also bring a wide range of
intellectual preoccupations and expertise that includes Caribbean History, African American
History, African History, Afrofuturism, Health Disparities (Domestic and Global), Critical and
Political Theory, Black Feminism, Pan Africanism, and the importance of African Diasporic
language learning. We will speak across our current book projects, research interests, and
efforts in and with our local community. We consider this roundtable a unique opportunity to
engage the major concerns of this year’s conference in both an intimate and intellectual
register.

Sub Unit

• Theory, Practice & Struggle

Chair

• Felicia Denaud, University of Cincinnati

Discussants

• John Kalubi, University of Cincinnati

• Edward Wallace, University of Cincinnati

• Holly McGee, The University of Cincinnati-Department of Africana Studies

• Cassandra L. Jones, University of Cincinnati

• Guy-Lucien Whembolua

• JOSEPH TAKOUGANG, University of Cincinnati

• Nicholas McLeod, Dept. of Africana Studies/University of Cincinnati

• Felicia Denaud, University of Cincinnati