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Six doctoral students have been selected to receive 2019 Ford Foundation Fellowships: Jorge Cartaya, Ryan Feathers, Breanna Leslie-Skye, Yoselinda Mendoza, and Kevin Quin received predoctoral competition fellowships, while Esmeralda Arrizon-Palomera received a dissertation competition fellowship. Honorable mentions were awarded to Jordan Garcia,...
..."The sad thing honestly is here, 60 years after Brown v. Board, so many Black, Latino, poor kids are in schools that are as highly segregated as was true 10 years after Brown v. Board," said Noliwe Rooks, professor of Africana Studies at Cornell University. "One of the reasons we've returned to such high levels of segregation is we refuse to...
Caribbean migration, ‘In a Word’Professor Carole Boyce Davies and associate professor Ishion Hutchinson will engage in a wide-ranging conversation about their creative and scholarly work archiving the Caribbean experience during global conflicts in “In a Word: Caribbean Migrations and Imperial Projects,” May 1 at 4:30 p.m. in Rhodes-Rawlings...
‘The Waysof White Folks’By NOLIWE M. ROOKSAs I prepared to teach class the day after news of the admissions-bribery scandal broke, I reflected on my students. I knew that many had benefited from a system, based on race and wealth, that prepared them to sit in my classroom. And, surely, race and lack of wealth had kept others out. My thoughts...
...New York City in February outlawed discrimination against black hair, including cornrows and Bantu knots. The law protects against bias in public spaces from restaurants and nightclubs in addition to schools and workplaces. “This is big,” Noliwe Rooks, professor of Africana studies at Cornell University, told USA TODAY at the time. “Hair is...
On April 19, 1969, Cornell students began a 36-hour occupation of Willard Straight Hall in protest of racial issues on campus. Fifty years to the day, faculty, staff, students and alumni gathered at the Straight to reflect on the legacy of the occupation and the people involved.“Talks of racial injustice and campus climate, in many ways, started...
Frank Dawson ’72 held a public conversation April 18 in Bailey Hall with Harry Edwards, Ph.D. ’73, about social justice and the 36-hour occupation of Willard Straight Hall.Fifty years earlier, on April 19, 1969, dozens of members of Cornell’s Afro-American Society and several Latino students occupied the building to call attention to what they...
The 50th Anniversary of the Willard Straight Hall Occupation continues this week with a keynote conversation between two alumni involved in the protest and a remembrance walk from the Africana Center to Willard Straight Hall.Harry Edwards Ph.D. ’73 and Frank Dawson ’72 will delve into their experience with the occupation of Willard Straight Hall...
This April marks the 50th anniversary of the Willard Straight Hall occupation and the resulting founding of the Africana Studies and Research Center. A two-day symposium will commemorate the historic events on April 12 and 13.The Willard Straight takeover on April 19, 1969, was largely a response to the University’s ill-preparedness to address...
Okwui Enwezor, an influential Nigerian curator whose large-scale exhibitions displaced European and American art from its central position as he forged a new approach to art for a global age, died on Friday in Munich. He was 55.The cause was cancer, said his partner, Louise Neri.Read the entire article in The New York Times.
...“This is big,” said Noliwe Rooks, professor of Africana studies at Cornell University. “Hair is connected to civil rights … and needs to be protected.”Black hair has had a symbolic potency in the USA since the 1800s and has been a stand-in for a kind of black identity that doesn't want to assimilate.“It’s at the moment of when you had large...
Cornell’s the Institute for Comparative Modernities will partner with the Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational and the Africa Institute, Sharjah, to host “Axis of Solidarity: Landmarks, Platforms, Futures,” a conference at the Tate Modern in London from Feb. 23-25.The conference will bring together scholars, writers, curators, researchers...
...There has long been a professional toll for those with certain hairstyles. Almost 18 percent of United States soldiers in active duty are black, but it is only in recent years that the military has dropped its prohibitions on hairstyles associated with black culture. The Marines approved braid, twist and “lock” (usually spelled loc) hairstyles ...
...Noliwe Rooks is a professor at Cornell University who teaches about the politics of race and beauty. She says that women are placed in different categories depending on "how they appear in the world," and that attempts to decolonize one's beauty routine often lead to pushback from the outside world — especially for black and brown people. She...
Riche’ Richardson was raised by a close-knit Montgomery family, full of hard workers. Their lives, she said, were busy. In the midst of working as educators and nurses and construction workers, they constantly pursued projects. Her grandfather was fixing things around the house, her grandmother was trying new recipes, her aunt was sewing, and...
This conference will bring together scholars, writers, curators, researchers, and artists to reflect on the international solidarity movements that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century during processes of decolonisation in Africa, Asia and Latin America.These transnational solidarities expressed themselves in landmark events,...
Autherine Lucy Foster could only pause for a moment a few days ago at her Alabama home. Her husband Hugh was waiting for her, and she did not have much time to speak of a convention in Buffalo almost 63 years ago that also featured Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a gathering emblematic of the courage honored by Monday's national holiday.Foster...
Professor Iftikhar Dadi is the recipient and Principal Investigator of a $238,000 grant from the Getty Foundation's Connecting Art Histories initiative. This grant will support a series of research seminars titled Modern Art Histories in and across Africa, South and Southeast Asia. The grant has been awarded through the Institute of Comparative...
The country that Franklin Delano Roosevelt admonished not to succumb to fear and John F. Kennedy challenged to put humans on the moon within a decade, the most powerful country and sole surviving superpower in our world, has become a Republic of Fear.African American life has always been marked by preponderant, disabling fear, starting with...
...Trinidadian Carole Boyce Davies, professor of Africana Studies and English at Cornell University in the US, said that while the museum is a fulfilment of Senghor's vision, the work of decolonising knowledge must continue."It's just a drop in the bucket, we need to do a lot more," she said in the article.She envisages the museum to become a...
Carole Boyce Davies, professor of Africana Studies and English at Cornell University in the US, said that while the museum is a fulfilment of Senghor's vision, the work of decolonising knowledge must continue."It's just a drop in the bucket, we need to do a lot more."Boyce Davies, who is from Trinidad and Tobago, will be joined by other...
The exhibition explores intersecting ideas of race, myth, art, and justice through the lens and unique interpretations of twelve inter-generational photographers. Via innovative contemporary art practices, the photographers engage with the premise of “race” as a social construct rooted in myth, while simultaneously interrogating its profound...
...Charter critics worried about draining funds from district schools and a lack of union regulations over teacher hiring, wages and benefits, especially in low-income communities. Russell Rickford, associate professor of history at Cornell University and author of We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and the Radical...
Hip-hop artist Akua Naru explores the myriad experiences of Black women through jazz and soul. She is also Harvard University’s Nasir Jones fellow at the Hutchin Center for African and African American Research.The distinguished New Haven-born musician brought her signature voice to Ithaca on Monday evening, speaking and performing at the...
Conversation with Akua NaruGlobal hip-hop artist, activist and scholar Akua Naru will be featured in a conversation with associate professor of Africana studies Oneka LaBennett, Nov. 12 at 4:30 p.m. at the Africana Studies and Research Center. The event is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception.As an artist, Naru...