Find information for elective Fall ’24 courses here!
Garrett Bradley: Interior/Exterior
RE-IMAGINING BLACK CINEMA
Screening of 3 Films by Oscar-Nominated Garrett Bradley, followed by a Q&A with the audience led by Sonja Bertucci
October 18, 7 p.m. | Ukrop Auditorium, Robins School of Business
Studio Visit with Student Filmmakers
October 19, 10 a.m. -12 noon | Keller Hall, Visual & Media Arts Practice Gallery
“Reimagining Community in Cinema” explores the diverse ways in which community is historically imagined and reimagined in documentary and fiction film from the silent era to the digital age. Through events such as symposia, masterclasses, film screenings and conversations with filmmakers, the festival honors in particular the contributions of historically marginalized communities.
Black Nostalgia: Jim Crow and the Longing for Home
Join the Africana Studies program in welcoming author, Des Cooper for a conversation with students. The event will be in Weinstein Hall Brown Alley room on Wednesday, March 29, 2023 from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm. Drinks and munchies will be provided.
Nothing Special is a buddy story that spans generations. But it is also a love letter to the Black Family connections that survived the Great Migration. Between 1910 and 1970, more than six million African Americans left the Jim Crow South, but they never forgot the culture, the land, and the family they left behind. In the decades since, it’s been a summer ritual for many Black Families to reverse the journey and return south for a nostalgic visit to their home places. Through the lens of Nothing Special, Cooper celebrates the enduring connection between the generations who stayed in the South, and the millions of emigrants for whom it will always be home. We hope you will join us for this conversation.
Heed Black Wit and Wisdom: A Guide for Empire Building from Juan Latino, Europe’s First Black Poet (1572)
MARCH 22, 5:30 P.M. | INTERNATIONAL COMMONS, CAROLE WEINSTEIN INTERNATIONAL CENTER
Join us for a lecture by Elizabeth R. Wright, Distinguished Research Professor, Spanish Literature, Department of Romance Languages at the University of Georgia and author of The Epic of Juan Latino. Dilemmas of Race and Religion in Renaissance Spain.
In the euphoria unleashed by Spain’s victory in the Battle of Lepanto (7 October 1571), Juan Latino (1518-1594), a former slave whose clandestine education in Latin gained him a professorship at the Cathedral and the University of Granada (Spain), crafted an elegy for king Philip II. This lecture will examine and contextualize Latino’s elegy, first in terms of the cultural impact of Lepanto and, in turn, from the longer range perspective of the literature of the Black diaspora.
University of Richmond Race & Racism Project
Applications are now being accepted for the 2023 Summer Research Fellows
This summer we will examine the lives of individuals whose acts of resistance challenged the status quo of this institution, the state, and the nation. You are invited to spend 10 weeks engaging in new research that explores the circumstances that inspired them and their efforts to make lasting change. Information session will be on Tuesday, February 7, 2023 from 6pm - 7pm in the THC Think Tank.
Student Interest Fuels New Africana Studies Program
Students for the first time are taking courses in the new Africana Studies program at the University of Richmond.
“The push for this program was strong, and students can now major, minor, and receive degrees in Africana Studies,” said Ernest McGowen, the program’s coordinator. “It is a great opportunity to direct one’s studies toward their interests and fulfill our liberal arts mission.”
McGowen and other faculty members collaborated with students to create the program, following a student-driven proposal for UR to offer Africana Studies as an academic option.
The Africana Studies program launched with interdisciplinary courses and programming in the humanities, arts, and social sciences. The program explores the complex socio-political landscapes, economic structures, and cultural traditions that shape, impact, and stem from the African diaspora.
Faculty Highlights
Matthew Oware, Irving May Professor of Human Relations, published the chapter "Battle Rap: An Exploration of Competitive Rhyming in Hip Hop" in: African Battle Traditions of Insult. African Histories and Modernities.
View Bio
Bertram Ashe, professor of English and Africana studies advisory board member, published "American Blackness in Berlin: Race and Nationality in Contemporary Jazz Performance" in Sonic Identity at the Margins, co-edited by colleagues Joanna Love, associate professor of music, and Jessie Fillerup, associate professor of musicology.
View Bio
Matthew Oware, Irving May Professor of Human Relations and chair of the Department of Sociology & Anthropology published "Text mining and the examination of language used to report child maltreatment: How language impacts child welfare intake reports,” in the Children and Youth Services Review.
View Bio
Matthew Oware, Irving May endowed chair in sociology, published "15 Best New Rap Music Books to Read in 2021" on Bookauthority.
View BioIn the fall semester of 2020, the University of Richmond faculty overwhelmingly voted to create an Africana Studies program. This was a milestone in a grassroots undertaking begun by students during the spring of 2020. It was guided by skilled faculty and grown in alliance with alumni, staff, and community members seeking an intellectual space within UR in which critical analysis of blackness could take place.
Africana Studies is an academic concentration that critically examines the African diaspora from multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives. Through a wide variety of courses and programming in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, the Program explores the complex socio-political landscapes, economic structures, and cultural traditions that shape, impact, and stem from the African diaspora.
Africana Studies considers how “blackness,” as a racial construct, and the concept of race itself influence and are constitutive of the modern world’s development. A multilayered intellectual enterprise, the Program’s interrogations begin not with race as an assumed concept but as a site of profound epistemological and ontological meaning-making that must be considered in relation to gender, class, nation, ethnicity, religion, and sexuality.
Faculty and students interested in Africana Studies come from a diverse range of backgrounds. The Program serves people from a range of varied ethnic, racial, gender, sexual orientation, economic status, and ideological spectrums as it strives to foster inclusion and equity. Program participants bring to the field a depth of skills and breadth of disciplinary strengths. As such, the program serves as an intellectual center and touchstone for those interested in using innovative avenues of theoretical and empirical investigation to explore the African diaspora.
Designed to provide curriculum that includes broad humanistic and social science traditions as well as extensive social and behavioral theoretical foundations as intrinsic components of study, the Program aims to provide students with interdisciplinary knowledge, skills, and competencies. Through well-designed courses and collaborations with community partners, it engages students inside and outside the classroom.
The Africana Studies Program prepares students for a wide range of academic and professional fields relevant to public, private, and civil-society sector careers. The interdisciplinary nature of Africana Studies allows for a rich and challenging course of inquiry, benefiting students with interests in history, policy, culture, language, law, foreign affairs, visual and performing arts, and education, among other fields. A major or minor in this area will provide an invaluable foundation in critical thinking, research, writing, and analysis; skills that form the core of a liberal arts education.
There are no limits to what students can do with an Africana Studies degree. The Africana Studies Program formally launched in the fall of 2022. Join us.