Spring 2007 Schedule
of Events
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Thursday, April 12 - The
Border and Transcultural Studies Research Circle presents Rejin Leys:
L150 Elvehjem, at 4:00pm “Contemporary Haitian American Art: The Work of
Rejin Leys”
Rejin Leys is a
Haitian-American mixed-media and book artist. She received a BFA from
Parson’s School of Design in 1988 and an MFA from Brooklyn College in
2000. Her books, prints, drawings and installations explore such themes
as labor, migration, and social and environmental justice. Leys
participated in such artists’ collectives as Coast-to-Coast, National
women artists of Color, and Kouran, a New York based group of young
Haitian artists. Her work has been exhibited nationally and
internationally.
Rejin Leys’s work combines social and political commentary with an
exploration of materials and techniques not usually seen in traditional
Haitian art. In this presentation, we will look at this work in the
context of works by Haitian and other African diaspora artists.
Co-sponsored by the Department of French and Italian, LACIS, African
Diaspora and the Atlantic World Research Circle, Visual Culture, and the
Art History Department. With support from the Department of
International Studies, International Institute, and Global Studies
Program.
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Wednesday, April 18 - Symposium: 206 Ingraham
Hall, 3:00 - 5:00pm: "Black Man,
You Are on Your Own! Black Consciousness and South African Student
Thought, 1968 - 1972" by Dan Magaziner, Graduate Student, Dept. of History
(to access this paper, contact Heather DuBois
Bourenane
at hldubois@wisc.edu
for required username and password).
This paper
examines the genesis of the Black Consciousness slogan “black man you
are on your own” during the last years of the 1960s and first of the
1970s. It suggests that this was a diaspora project in that South
African students consciously placed themselves in the world: in Africa,
in the wider community of color and, more fundamentally, in the student
politics of the 1960s.
It follows words
and ideas to suggest how meanings translated from context to context and
challenges attempts to ascribe a universal meaning to concepts like
“black” and “African.”
In 1960,
two African American academics, Hugh Smythe and Mabel Smythe, published
a sociological study called The New Nigerian Elite.
Hugh
Smythe, formerly a research assistant to W. E. B. Du Bois, had conducted
research in Nigeria in 1957-58 on a Ford Foundation fellowship, and two
years later co-directed the volunteer program Crossroads Africa with the
Reverend
James Robinson.
Like many
who studied Africa during this period, the Smythes were greatly
interested in modernization and national independence.
How would
African colonies make the transition to sovereignty?
What
choices would they make in constituting their nationalities?
Who would
lead and how?
What would
be the leadership group’s sources of legitimacy?
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Wednesday, January 24 -
Symposium:
A People “Intrepid to the Last Degree,” A
People Who, “Glorify in a Certain Independence” : Maroon Societies and
the Kromanti and Kisama Nations, 1500-1800 by Jessica A.
Krug, Graduate Student, Dept. of History, at 206 Ingraham Hall,
3:00 - 5:00pm.
(to access this paper, contact Heather DuBois
Bourenane
at hldubois@wisc.edu
for required username and password)
Maroonage
and resistance was not only an omnipresent response to the brutality of
slavery, but the development of multi-ethnic national identities through
these processes shaped the entire Atlantic world from the sixteenth
century onward.
Naturally,
this process of resistance did not begin on American soil. Some
scholars of African history have pointed to the similarities between
certain communities that developed in the wake of the violence of the
trans-Atlantic slave trade in Africa and Maroon communities in the
Americas.
In this
essay, I examine the formation of national identities in the case of the
Kromanti in the British Caribbean in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries and the Kisama in Angola in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. This comparison reveals a broad strategy of identity
formation in these two Maroon societies that allowed for Africans to
mobilize effective political responses to the terror and brutality that
surrounded them.
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Wednesday, February 21 -
Symposium:
Monument, British Colonial State
Governmentality and State Fetishism in Nigeria: Benedict (Ben) Enwonwu’s
Portrait of Queen Elizabeth II by Freida High W. Tesfagiorgis,
Professor Dept. of Afro-American Studies, at 206 Ingraham Hall,
3:00 - 5:00pm.
(to access this paper, contact Heather DuBois
Bourenane
at hldubois@wisc.edu
for required username and password)
Given his artistic style, educational background and
prominent government position, Enwonwu was fully immersed in an elite
level of British colonial discourse.
Moreover, he utilized his status and connections to
promote himself as an artist while inspiring populations globally.
Enwonwu produced the portrait in honor of the Queen’s three-week tour of
Nigeria that began in Lagos on January 28, 1956.
It is a common belief that the British Colonial
Government selected the artist to sculpt the portrait, but unsealed
documents in the Public Records Office in London reveal that it was
Enwonwu himself who initiated the commission with Colonial
representatives.
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March 2 and 3 - "Cosmopolitan
Cultures, Cosmopolitan Histories"
An Interdisciplinary
conference at the Pyle Center, featuring internationally renowned
speakers including Etienne Balibar, Sheldon Pollock, and Pheng Cheah.
The conference is hosted by the UW Cosmopolitanism Mellon Seminar with
support from the Center for the Humanities Sponsored by the Anonymous
Fund and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Co-Sponsored by ADAWRC
(African Diaspora and Atlantic World Research Circle), English, French
and Italian, and German Departments, UW-Madison. Click here for
information on
Conference Description and
Program
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