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UNPACKING HISTORY BEHIND SCHOOL SEGREGATION — Cornell University experts Kendra Bischoff and Noliwe Rooks discussed specialized high schools, gifted and talented programming, charters and the issues of diversity, school segregation and educational inequality at a media-only lunch in Manhattan. “At every moment there is a state or a national will...
As a playwright Mr. Branch delved into the black experience, both in the 20th century and earlier, in Off Broadway plays like “A Medal for Willie,” about the bitterness that ensues when a black World War II veteran who had been mistreated in the service is decorated posthumously; “A Wreath for Udomo,” with its theme of colonial oppression in South...
...Enwezor [ the late Okwui Enwezor (1963–2019)] conceived the 15th edition of the Sharjah Biennial (SB15), entitled Thinking Historically in the Present, as a platform to reflect on the past fourteen editions of the Biennial and to consider the future of the biennial model.Sharjah Art Foundation director Hoor Al Qasimi well help realize the...
With a number of new hires this year, CIVIC (Critical Inquiry into Values, Imagination and Culture), the provost’s Radical Collaboration initiative focused on the humanities and the arts, is halfway toward its goal of 10 new faculty.The radical collaboration task forces are intended to help with faculty hiring and retention in targeted...
On Tuesday, the Africana Studies and Research Center hosted a public commemoration to reflect on one of Cornell’s most treasured alumnae, Toni Morrison M.A. ’55, who passed away in August.The event was an intimate gathering of Morrison’s friends, colleagues and admirers and featured Cornell students, Ithaca residents and faculty from the...
..."It is a globally oriented institution with a focus on the humanities and social sciences that will have a postgraduate studies programme offering both masters and PhD degrees with the aim of training a new generation of critical thinkers in African and African diaspora studies.”Previous musicians who have performed at the annual opening...
Faculty members are encouraged to apply for the position of provost’s fellow for public engagement. The application period closes Oct. 15.The provost’s fellow, who serves a two-year term, works closely with Katherine McComas, vice provost for engagement and land-grant affairs, and with the Office of Engagement Initiatives. Gerard Aching, M.A. ’...
Remembering Toni Morrison, M.A. ’55The Africana Studies and Research Center, 310 Triphammer Road, hosts a celebration in memory of Toni Morrison, M.A. ’55, Oct. 1 at 4:30 p.m. in the center’s Multipurpose Room. The event is free and open to the public.“Toni Morrison (1931-2019): A Life in Letters” is an afternoon of reflection on the late...
Poetry and performance -- as well as more traditional presentations -- comprised the first Rural Humanities Showcase, held in the A.D. White House. The nine projects represented Cornell University faculty engagement, teaching, and research around "rural humanities," which uses the tools of the humanities to both address the rural-urban divide and...
...Starting with their hair. “It’s amazing how often people find dreadlocks to be a particular kind of offense,” says Noliwe Rooks, a professor at the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University who frequently writes about the cultural and racial implications of beauty and fashion. “And so there’s a long line of people saying, ‘I...
...According to Abdel Latif Dahir, the movement to use art to support change harkens back to the modernist art of The Khartoum School that developed in post-independence Sudan in 1960. By using visual art in activism, younger generations are continuing “that memory and legacy of standing up against totalitarian governments and military regimes,”...
Toni Morrison was truly a genius. Her sudden passing on Aug. 5, 2019 is so heartbreaking. The Nobel Laureate will go down in history as one of the world’s greatest writers who helped globalize the novel as a genre. She made a profound, critical impact on areas such as African American literature, American literature, black women’s literature and...
...Tao Leigh Goffe took a Morrison course called “The Foreigner’s Home” in the fall of 2008. In Morrison’s office hours, Goffe asked her whether she should become a professor or a lawyer. One-on-one, Morrison was intently focused and frank with her.“She said I should become a lawyer because there aren’t enough women lawyers in the world,” Goffe...
...A recent study by the Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair (CROWN) coalition shows a black woman is 80 percent more likely to change her natural hair to meet social norms or expectations at work. And, black women are 50 percent more likely to be sent home or know of a black woman sent home from the workplace because of her hair...
...Morrison '55 continued her long connection to Cornell with public addresses at Bailey Hall in 2009 and Statler Auditorium in 2013.The school has continued its connection with her with a first-year writing seminar called “American Voices: Writing, Memory, and Survival in the Novels of Toni Morrison.”This fall, Cornell will offer a higher-...
Morrison died earlier this week at the age of 88.She earned a Master’s degree in English from the University in 1955 and was an A. D. White Professor-at-Large from 1997-2003. She also visited and lectured at Cornell several times.It is Morrison’s generosity with Cornell students that Anne Adams remembers best. She was Morrison’s faculty host...
In Jordan Peele’s latest film Us, which follows on the success of his 2017 hit Get Out, an affluent black family has its home invaded by sinister doppelgängers—a sort of literalization of W.E.B. Du Bois’s noion of black “double consciousness.” Perhaps Peele even had in mind Du Bois’s famous sentence: “One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a...
..."[Sherman] had what she considered to be viable death threats against her," says Noliwe Rooks, author of Hair Raising: Beauty, Culture and the African American Woman. "All because she was trying to teach little kids, many of which were of African descent, that 'nappy' could be seen as positive."Rooks said that when she first heard about the...
...Sitting in Statler Auditorium in 2013, Morrison, who joined Princeton University’s faculty in 1989, answered audience questions alongside fellow Princeton Prof. Claudia Brodsky, who told The Sun that the two had become close friends and “each other’s favorite analytical interlocutors instantly and permanently upon meeting.”Courtesy of Cornell...
...Noliwe Rooks, an author and professor at Cornell University whose work explores race and gender, said Friday that the Georgia school’s display illustrates why there is a need for legal protections for hair.“Those particular styles, and the fact that schools make arbitrary decisions about good and bad hairstyles is long standing across the...
In the late 1960s, Black communities began to demand academic programs and funding for African American studies at universities across the country.Black students at Cornell University seized and occupied the university’s Willard Straight Hall in April 1969 to protest conditions on campus. They demanded the creation of a Black Studies program to...
Bushwick, Brooklyn, has emerged as the center of New York’s club scene. From the casual-chic string lights and tarps of Nowadays to industrial art spaces like Elsewhere and the new, kitsch-fabulous Sultan Room, there is plenty of music-inspired euphoria to choose from.And plenty of female D.J.s, deep in the zone, setting the mood.But...
After several years in Karachi developing artistic and research projects, I [Iftikhar Dadi] returned to the US in 1998 to work on a PhD in art history with Salah Hassan at Cornell University. Hassan and Okwui Enwezor were among the founders of the journal Nka, which remains a leading publication on contemporary African and diaspora art. Nka began...
Biden says his stance on busing isn’t controversial. His critics disagree.Speaking to Vox on June 28, an adviser to the Biden campaign argued that Biden’s comments had been misconstrued to suggest that he opposed busing in its entirety, when he actually only opposed federal enforcement of busing in certain districts.That same day, addressing...
Shifting Public ViewsPublic opinion on the subject is complicated. In a 2017 poll issued by PDK International, about three-quarters of parents said it was “somewhat” or “very important” to have racially diverse public schools. But black parents were far more likely than white and Hispanic parents to say they would accept a longer commute for a...