September 19, 2017
Table of Contents:
The Center for African Black & Caribbean Studies Welcomes the Maasai

Thursday, October 5, 2017
6:00 pm - 10:00 pm
Adelphi University - Angello Alumni House
154 Cambridge Avenue, Garden City, NY

Welcome Chief Ole Tipanko of over 5,000 Maasai tribal members in Kenya, East Africa, and his tribal representatives. Learn about Maasai traditions which emphasize family and living in harmony with the environment. The Chief and his tribal members will sing and discuss the ancient Maasai way of life and the concessions that must be made to current times. Handmade jewelry and various African merchandise will be available to benefit health, safety and education in Maasailand, especially for the women and young girls.


This event is free and open to the public.

Sponsored by the Center for African, Black & Caribbean Studies, General Studies and the Collaboration Project

Should you, or your guests, require an accommodation based on a disability, or need to request an ASL interpreter, please contact the Student Access Office by phone at (516) 877-3145 or email at sao@adelphi.edu. Please allow for a reasonable time frame prior to the event; we suggest a minimum of five business days.

Adelphi University
One South Avenue
Garden City, NY 11530
(516) 877-4978


New! AfroLatinx Podcast + Interactive Website

New! AfroLatinx Podcast Available!

This new podcast series is now available for listening through SoundCloud, and a project website with additional commentary, interactive bilingual audio, and vocabulary and reading lists. Each episode features voices from Spanish-speaking Black communities in the U.S., in partnership with Taller Puertorriqueño cultural center in North Philadelphia. 
  • Episode 1: Myth of Racial Mixture in Latinx Communities
  • Episode 2: In Between Black and Latinx
  • Episode 3: Beyond the Bounds of Race
For more on Taller  Puertorriqueño:  http://tallerpr.org  

The AfroLatinx Podcast TM was produced by undergraduate students at Swarthmore College, through our Spring 2017 linguistics seminar, Language and Identity in the African Experience. The seminar began with an encounter of Blackness in America through James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, and concluded with readings of Chege Githiora's Afro-Mexicans: Discourse of Race and Identity in the African Diaspora, and Laura A. Lewis' Chocolate and Corn Flour.

We invite you to use these episodes and additional materials to support your courses and efforts in digital scholarship, and to learn more about Philadelphia's Latinx community. We welcome your feedback!

Thank you,

Jamie A. Thomas
Assistant Professor of Linguistics
Swarthmore College



The Journal of American Culture - Call for Papers

Theme Issue: Visions of Black Womanhood in American Culture

It is hard to believe that almost thirty years after Hortense Spillers declared in "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe "that she was a marked woman whose blackness fuels the rhetorical currency of our nation's cultural treasury," we are confronted yet again with a new set of womanly profiles in American culture that expose just how invested America is in characterizing the controlling images of black womanhood. Whether it is Annalise Keating in How to Get Away with Murder, Henrietta Lacks in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Beyoncé' in the L'Oréal commercials, or First Lady Michelle Obama in the White House-we see fragments of the Sapphire or Jezebel of old, the Mammy/Matriarch figures re-engineered, and we are still searching for the outline of black women who, in performing these hyper-visible roles, in excesses of the flesh, speak a simple truth of black female identity that is more complex-indeed richer-than the historical images of eons ago.

We welcome essays on black women from a wide range of disciplinary fields related to American cultural studies, but not limited to media studies, film, art, literature, history, sociology, and music. Possible topics include, black female sexuality, black motherhood, black women's beauty culture, black colorism in print and visual media, black women's love relationships, among other topics. These essays should explore the fertile ground between the figurative and the literal bodies of black women-exploring the links between our visual history and culture, and the creative ways black women explore-and have challenged-the  weight of coded identities in these histories. The goal is to create a dynamic issue that teases out the contemporary undercurrents and subtleties of a full range of black women's identities both as a spiritual narrative, and a physical and visual one.

For this issue, we are accepting original scholarly essays, 15-25 pages in length. Please use MLA style using in-text citations with author's name and page number.  Endnotes and works cited should appear at the end of the paper.  In light of space limitations, please avoid excessive use of endnotes.

This issue will be edited by Carol E. Henderson (ceh@udel.edu). Please direct all questions to her.

The deadline for submission is December 31, 2017. The issue will be published in March 2019.



Assistant Professor of 19th-Century African American Literature

The University of Oregon's Department of English invites applications for a tenure-track position of Assistant Professor in 19th-Century African American Literature to begin fall 2018. We seek candidates specializing in any aspect of African American literature and culture before 1900. We welcome applications from scholars working on print culture, periodization, the recovery of understudied texts, or any other aspects of the tradition. In keeping with the interdisciplinary nature of African American Studies, we welcome applicants who draw on performance studies, gender and sexuality studies, archival studies, disability studies, or other methodologies. We are especially interested in candidates who would contribute to the department's demonstrated strengths in ethnic American literary studies, environmental humanities, and digital humanities. Competitive applicants will be capable of outstanding research and teaching at the graduate and undergraduate levels.

We offer students a broad foundation in British, American, and Anglophone literary studies, as well as intensive coursework in specific fields and methodologies. In recent years, the Department of English has collaborated with units across the College of Arts and Sciences in a Black Studies cluster hire; a Food Studies undergraduate minor and graduate specialization; a Disability Studies minor; a Native Studies minor, a graduate specialization in Politics, Culture, and Identity; the departmentalization of Cinema Studies; and a postdoctoral fellowship in Ethnic American Literature.

Minimum Requirements: Ph.D. in English, African American Studies, American Studies, or a related field in hand by time of appointment. Salary is competitive.

Candidates may apply at www.academicjobsonline.org by submitting an application letter, curriculum vitae, writing sample of approximately 20 pages, and three letters of recommendation by November 1, 2017. If you are unable to use this online resource, please contact engl@uoregon.edu to arrange alternate means of submitting application materials. The search committee will begin reading applications on November 1, 2017; conduct Skype interviews with candidates mid-late December 2017; and bring finalists to campus mid-January through February 2018.

The Department of English is dedicated to building a diverse faculty and an equitable and inclusive workplace. We particularly welcome applications from scholars who are from populations historically underrepresented in the academy, and/or who have experience working with students from racially, ethnically, economically, or otherwise diverse backgrounds. We request that applicants include in their cover letter information about how they will further equity and inclusion in our department and on our campus. In particular, candidates should describe previous activities mentoring students who identify as African American, Black, or multi-racial. Candidates should also note experience mentoring members of other historically underrepresented groups as well as women of any race or ethnicity.

The University of Oregon is one of only two Pacific Northwest members of the Association of American Universities and holds the distinction of a "very high research activity" ranking in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The UO enrolls more than 20,000 undergraduate and 3,600 graduate students representing all 50 states and nearly 100 countries. In recent years, the university has increased the diversity of its student body while raising average GPAs and test scores for incoming students. The UO's beautiful, 295-acre campus is located in Eugene, a vibrant city of 157,000 with a wide range of cultural and culinary offerings, a pleasant climate, and a community engaged in environmental and social concerns. The campus is within easy driving distance of the Pacific Coast, the Cascade Mountains, and Portland.




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