African American and African Studies at UC Davis Launches New Series on Black Global Issues

The UC Davis Department of African American and African Studies is launching a new speaker series to introduce the campus and larger community to new research in global Black studies. The series will bring in scholars from around the country. Titled “New Directions in Black Studies,” the free talk will be held in 3201 Hart Hall at noon. Register for the talks.

The series starts Oct. 6 with Professor Jemima Pierre of the Global Race in the Institute of Race, Gender, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia and a research associate at the Centre for the Study of Race, Gender and Class at the University of Johannesburg. Pierre’s research focuses on African and African diaspora studies, the culture and history of anthropological theory; and transnationalism, globalization and diaspora. She is the author of The Predicament of Blackness: Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race and writing a book tentatively titled “Racial Americanization: Conceptualizing African Immigrants in the U.S.”

Olufemi O. Vaughan, the Alfred Sargent Lee '41 and Mary Farley Ames Lee Professor of Black Studies and chair of Black studies at Amherst College, will give a talk Nov. 3. (It will be remote and can be livestreamed in Hart Hall or watched via Zoom.) Vaughan’s research has included African historical, political and sociological studies: state-society relations in Africa; colonial and postcolonial African societies; traditional political and social structures in modern Africa; and African migrations, transnationalism and globalization. He is author of Religion and the Making of Nigeria and many other books, and is recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ford Foundation and others.

Abosede George, the Tow Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies at Barnard College, will give a talk Dec. 1. Her research is focused on the social history and urban history of Lagos, Nigeria and West Africa. George’s current research examines Lagos as a place of convergence for migrant diasporic and refugee communities from the middle to late 19th century. As part of this research, she developed The Ekopolitan Project, a digital archive of family history sources on migrant communities in Lagos.

The series will continue every month throughout the academic year.