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...In putting the panel together, Director of American Studies Prof. Noliwe Rooks, Africana studies and feminist, gender and sexuality studies, said she wanted students and the public to understand what “conversation as a form of activism looks like.”With an audience composed of “community groups, high school students, undergraduates and...
Prof. Russell Rickford, history, said he was looking forward to a “no-holds-barred conversation,” that addresses “the troubled boundaries between reform and rebellion and between amelioration and abolition.”“Cobb is both a sophisticated historian and one of the most insightful commentators on race, class, and the struggle for democracy in...
Carole Boyce Davies, professor of Africana studies and English at Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York: "Many documentations of the punishments meted out to people who dared exercise 'choice' not to stay enslaved are available. If We Must Die (2009) documents over 500 shipboard rebellions.... A whole genre of slave narratives and abolitionist...
Noliwe Rooks is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work explores how race and gender both impact and are impacted by civic culture, social history and political life in the United States. She is the author of four books, the most recent of which is Cutting School: Privitization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education (New Press, 2017). Rooks...
...Race also plays a factor in how women in rap are perceived, according to Oneka LaBennett, who teaches a class about the sexual politics of women in hip-hop at Cornell University.“For black women and girls, and especially for women in hip-hop who are … performing their own sexuality in a liberated way, we are tempted not to see them as perfect...
Arts & Sciences faculty will participate in this year’s Community Arts Partnership’s Spring Writes Literary Festival, taking place in downtown Ithaca May 3-6. The festival features literary-themed events, including panels and workshops geared towards emerging and established writers, as well as events for the general public such as readings,...
AWARD WINNERSThe winners of the third edition of the prestigious literature prize were announced online on January 15, 2018 by chair of the Board of Trustees, Abdilatif Abdalla. The awards ceremony followed in February in Nairobi.In their jury, the judges described Mmeza Fupa as: “Rarely does one encounter a Kiswahili novel whose writer...
The first season of Louvre Abu Dhabi's public programmes continues with a lecture by Professor Salah Hassan about the pioneering Modern artist Ibhrahim El-Salahi on 18 April and South African Band Via Sophiatown (19-20 April) at the museum.With the participation of future neighbouring museum, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi together with Louvre Abu Dhabi...
ST. PETERSBURG –The St. Petersburg Branch NAACP, in partnership with the Legal Defense Fund and St. Petersburg College, hosted Dr. Noliwe Rooks last Friday and Saturday as she discussed the state of the educational system and her latest book, “Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education.”Rooks, an...
The talk, entitled 'Pioneering Modernism: Ibrahim El-Salahi', will be led by Professor Salah Hassan, Goldwin Smith Professor of African and African Diaspora Art History and Visual Culture in Africana Studies and Research Centre, and Department of History of Art and Visual Studies, and Director of the Institute for Comparative Modernities, ICM,...
It’s been a quarter-century since Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo ’08, MA ’15, first played through to the end of the classic Nintendo game “Metroid” at the age of six or seven, but she’ll never forget its thrilling finale. It wasn’t just the satisfaction of completing a quest as futuristic bounty hunter Samus Aran, the game’s protagonist—it was the eye-...
...One of the Meeting's most impassioned talks occurred on the second day in a discussion between Salah Hassan, Goldwin Smith Professor and Director, Institute for Comparative Modernities at Cornell University, and Manthia Diawara, Professor and Director, Institute of African American Affairs at New York University. Hassan began by introducing...
... James Baldwin’s AmericaThe History Center in Tompkins County and the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell will host “James Baldwin’s America,” a reading and discussion series beginning April 3.In the series, developed and sponsored by Humanities New York, participants will explore themes in Baldwin’s major essays in works...
Members of the President’s Visioning Committee on Cornell in New York City held an open forum and discussion March 27, sharing findings from a recent campus survey and asking for additional feedback to help shape the parameters and scope of their recommendations.The 11-member faculty committee’s charge is to envision what the university’s...
Drawing on early sexological texts, Afro-modernist literature, slave narratives, journalism and film to argue how slavery and racialized gender provided a foundation for mutable gender, C. Riley Snorton — associate professor of Africana Studies at Cornell University — presented a lecture on his new book “Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of...
...About 90 Cornell undergraduate and graduate students, as well as academic fellows from across the globe, toured the United Nations. This was the 14th annual trip organized by N’Dri Assié-Lumumba, professor of African/diaspora education at the Africana Studies and Research Center in the College of Arts and Sciences; and Marcus Scales, the...
...On the ground in Missouri, Zirin observed much of what the rest of us didn't, and a reversal of Carrington's theory: The football players were not moved to action until the black women on campus moved them. Their protest also came after one student, who was not on the team, went on a hunger strike."What was really interesting to me was...
Last Wednesday, the office of New York City Mayor, Bill de Blasio, announced that Miami-Dade School Superintendent, Alberto Carvalho, would be the new chancellor of New York City’s school system, and that Carvalho would be in New York City the following day for a formal announcement. On Thursday, Carvalho was still in Miami. He then stunned New...
JAISAL NOOR: Welcome to The Real News. I'm Jaisal Noor in in Baltimore. What do liberal heroes like former President Barack Obama, Cory Booker and Wendy Kopp of Teach For America have in common with billionaires like Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and the Walton family of Walmart fame. Our guest today argues they are just part of a long line of...
In light of the huge success and heated discussion around the recent Marvel blockbuster “Black Panther,” several scholars of Africana Studies examined its cultural significance in the current political environment and dissected the historical and political elements behind the movie.Prof. N’Dri Thérèse Assié-Lumumba, African and diaspora...
...[D]espite the brutality they saw during the Children’s Crusade, young people remained at the center of the movement. For example, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee trained African-American children at “Freedom Schools,” which taught teens everything from black history to how to deal with hostile white peers.Joined during 1964’s “...
ETHIOPIA“Ethiopian women love butter,” says model and activist Gelila Bekele, who was born in Addis Ababa. For centuries, women in Ethiopia have relied on raw, unsalted butter to nourish dry hair. “Moisture for black hair has taken myriad forms depending on availability and location,” says Noliwe Rooks, an associate professor of Africana and...
Dubai, United Arab Emirates | February 6, 2018 – The Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A), in partnership with Art Jameel, has announced the shortlist for the Jameel Prize 5, the international prize for contemporary artists and designers inspired by Islamic tradition. Eight finalists have been shortlisted for the £25,000 (AED 128,000) prize,...
"How 'segrenomics' underpins the movement to privatize public education", an article published in The Washington Post this month, features commentary from Noliwe M. Rooks on the ways in which companies and individuals have utilized privatization and deregulation to capitalize on racial and economic inequalities in education, a conversation that...
Schubert recitalProfessor Emeritus of Music Malcolm Bilson will be joined by violinist Ariana Kim and pianist Shin Hwang in an all-Schubert program, Feb. 2 at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall Auditorium.The performance is free and open to the public and presented by the Department of Music. Selections in the program will include “Sonata in A Major,” “...