Chuck Davis, 80

Chuck Davis, Who Brought African Dance Traditions to America, Dies at 80
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, May 15, 2017

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BAM Next Wave: Reggie Wilson's NY premiere of "CITIZEN"

Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group
performs Wilson's CITIZEN at BAM Harvey Theater.
(photo: Sally Cohn)

Early on in CITIZEN--new to New York from Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group for BAM Next Wave at BAM Harvey--a striking French Romantic portrait of Jean-Baptiste Belley momentarily appears on the backdrop behind one of Wilson's dancers. Belley, born in Senegal, was a slave, a rebel in Haiti's revolution and, during the French Revolution, was elected to the National Convention. If you knew none of those facts, you'd surely guess at the import of a Black man, in 18th Century dress, meriting such painstaking and forceful portraiture.

Belley's image remains visible for only a short time, long enough to impress but not long enough to get you thinking too much about his history. Wilson--ever the researcher and voyager--has taken care of all of that, including making the trip to Versailles to see the actual painting. He has also thought about race and what it means to find oneself in a society not perceived to be home. ("What does it mean to belong, and to not want to belong?") But he sets the viewer free to be with the work without necessarily having to puzzle out any of that.

While we cannot un-see Belley, and he might continue to haunt some of us, everything else we do see appears to atomize Wilson's research and musings. They spread out and form a texturous fabric of clear, repeated gestures and movement patterns sometimes assigned to specific performers and ultimately, beautifully, taken up by all. The work runs just a bit over an hour and, in that time, we're immersed in and transfixed by this living texture that signals individual portraiture without ever delivering big, obvious narrative details about characters, even in Altor Mendilibar's poetic cinematography. I got caught up in Anna Schön's sinuosity and toughness and wondered how Wilson picked that particular combination of traits to highlight in one body, but I would never expect to pinpoint their exact source or his reason.

It's as if Wilson beckons us close to a painting to look at the minute brush strokes and maybe even the chemical and molecular makeup of the paint because, after all, that's how the artist delivered the goods, how the artist told the story. That's how Wilson tells his story.

Along for Wilson's latest postmodern journey into the African diaspora are some adroit and interesting performers in addition to Schön--Yeman Brown, Raja Feather Kelly, Clement Mensah and Annie Wang.

Lighting: Christopher Kuhl
Costumes: Enver Chakartash

CITIZEN runs through Saturday with performances at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton Street, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

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Tony Gleaton, 67

Tony Gleaton, 67, Dies, Leaving Legacy in Pictures of Africans in the Americas
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, August 18, 2015

Writers Danticat and Brown on feminism and Caribbean diaspora

Edwidge Danticat
(photo: Jonathan Demme)

Barnard Center for Research on Women

presents

Caribbean Feminisms on the Page:

Edwidge Danticat and Victoria Brown

Thursday, September 17, 6:30pm

Barnard alumna Edwidge Danticat and novelist Victoria Brown come together in the second event in the series, Caribbean Feminisms on the Page. This series places distinguished writers in conversation with emerging authors to discuss issues including feminism, diaspora, and method.

Free admission. 

For information, 

click here.

Edwidge Danticat is a 2009 MacArthur fellow and is the author of several books, including Brother, I’m Dying, which was a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and a 2008 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. This year, she will publish a picture book, Mama’s Nightengale, and a young adult novel, Untwine.

Victoria Brown is the author of Minding Ben (released in paperback as Grace in the City), a novel about a teenager from Trinidad working as a nanny in New York City. She has an MFA in Fiction from Hunter College. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, NBC news, New York Magazine, The Sunday Salon Fiction Zine, and Babble. She teaches in the English Department at LaGuardia Community College, and is currently at work on her second novel.

Event Oval, Diana Center
Barnard College
3009 Broadway, Manhattan
(map/directions)

Celebrate New York's traditional African dance artists

N'Deye Gueye
(photo courtesy of the artist)

Town Hall

An Evening with Traditional African Dance Artists in NYC:

Conversation, Demonstration and Celebration

A presentation of Dance/NYC

Thursday, September 17

6-7:30pm

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Admission is free 

with required reservation. 

Click here.

Dance/NYC and the New York Public Library's Jerome Robbins Dance Division present an evening of conversation and dance demonstration with Master African dance artists who have greatly transformed the dance landscape in New York City. Interviewed during the African Dance Interview Project of 2014, these esteemed artists include Maguette Camara, Marie Basse-Wiles, Mouminatou Camara, Youssouf Koumbassa, and N'Deye Gueye. This initiative, conceived by Jan Schmidt with Carolyn Webb serving as Project Director, was developed to increase community knowledge, awareness, and appreciation of traditional African dance in NYC. Renowned scholar and lecturer of the African Diaspora, C. Daniel Dawson, will moderate the evening.

Bruno Walter Auditorium

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

40 Lincoln Center Plaza (between Columbus and Amsterdam), Manhattan

(map/directions)

Afro-Haitian workshop with Adia Tamar Whitaker, September 19-20

Choreographer Adia Tamar Whitaker
of Àṣẹ Dance Theatre Collective

The International Partner Dance Intensive 

Workshop Series 2015

presents

Roots and Beyond: 

An Afro-Haitian  Intensive workshop

with 

Adia Tanar Whitaker

Saturday and Sunday

September 19-20 (2pm-7pm)

Battery Dance Studio

380 Broadway, 5th Floor (at White Street), Manhattan

(map/directions)

Arguably one of the most influential of the "ethnic" dance forms, Afro-Haitian dance has had a profound impact on hip hop, commercial dance, and a variety of modern dance forms.

Join award-winning choreographer, ethnographer, dancer, teacher, and all-around powerhouse, Adia Tamar Whitaker, and musicians from her award-winning dance company, Àṣẹ Dance Theatre Collective, for two intense, joyful days immersed in Afro-Haitian dance and music. 

Limited to 30 dancers. Tuition: $135 for the 8-hour intensive. Payment plans available. Low-cost housing for out-of-town participants available.

For more information and to register, click here.

TIPDI (The International Partner Dance Intensive) is a series of workshop weekends and extended dance camps for adult dancers, based in New York City. Our full TIPDI program is a cross-training intensive, where dancers 18 and older take daily, leveled classes in all six dance forms offered--Argentine Tango, Ballet, West Coast Swing, Modern, Salsa, and Afro-Haitian dance, taught by world-class instructors. Over the course of our first three years, we've welcomed dancers from 12 states and 11 countries, ranging in age from 20-70.

Sierra Leone-born ballerina Michaela DePrince featured in Glamour

Michaela DePrince
(photo: Alique for GLAMOUR)

BALLERINA MICHAELA DEPRINCE 

ON ACHIEVING HER DREAMS

GLAMOUR, August 2015

I Was Orphan Number 27:
Ballerina Michaela DePrince's Inspiring Story

by Erika Hayasaki

Michaela DePrince lost her family as a girl in Sierra Leone during the brutal civil war; now she’s a world-class ballerina, her triumph soon to be a Hollywood movie, Taking Flight. But her biggest goal? To inspire young girls through working with the Girl Scouts and War Child, a group that helps children in conflict zones. DePrince shares her journey in Glamour’s August issue, on national newsstands now and available digitally at glamour.com/app.

How will dancers embody the Afrofuture?

CALL FOR CONFERENCE PROPOSALS: 

DANCING THE AFRICAN DIASPORA: EMBODYING THE AFROFUTURE

Collegium for African Diaspora Dance (CADD) Conference
Duke University, February 19-21, 2016

How might we imagine the impact and import of Black dance within the context of afro-futurism?

What sorts of movement practices reflect an embodied Black feminist/womanist perspective?

What does Black Dance contribute within the context of ongoing brutality and practices of resistance?

CADD's second conference, Dancing the African Diaspora: Embodying the Afrofuture, aims to re-ignite the discourse on defining Black Dance on a global scale by bringing together scholars, practitioners, educators, and other stakeholders for three days of intellectual and artistic inspiration.  Anchored by critical dialogue and provocative research presentations, the conference will also feature breakout sessions, movement workshops, film screenings, and a performance by Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion culminating their Duke residency.

This three-day conference seeks to center African diaspora dance as a resource and method of aesthetic identity. The Collegium for African Diaspora Dance aims to facilitate an interdisciplinary discussion that captures the variety of topics, approaches, and methods that might constitute Black Dance Studies.

"Dancing the African Diaspora" suggests multiple exigencies and interests. We are interested in papers/presentations that consider dance practices throughout the African diaspora, and the specific contexts that engender them. We are also interested in dance as an approach to the understanding/engaging the African diaspora itself. This convening situates black dance as constituted by theories of black performance. We invite you to explore black movement as a technology of African diasporic identity-making. Presentations are invited along any theoretical line of inquiry concerned with African diaspora dance. We welcome papers that engage any site or topic related to black movement and those that represent a rigorous engagement with a number of disciplinary and methodological perspectives.

Possible topics include:

Black dance, virtuality, and technologies of mediationPedagogical politicsIdentity and community makingCorporeality, gender and sexuality in the African diaspora danceColonialism, neoliberalism, commodification

Deadline for Proposals:  October 1, 2015

Confirmations sent:  October 15, 2015

Click here to submit your proposal. 

For questions, click here.

 
Conference Committee|Collegium for African Diaspora Dance (CADD)Founding Members

Takiyah Amin, Thomas F. DeFrantz,  Shireen Dickson, Jasmine Johnson, Raquel Monroe, C. Kemel Nance, Carl Paris, John Perpener, Will Rawls, Makeda Thomas, Andrea E. Woods Valdés, Ava LaVonne Vinesett

Sponsors for this event include: SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology in residence at Duke; Humanities Writ Large @ Duke; the Collegium for African Diaspora Dance; the Corporeality Working Group @ Duke; the Duke Dance Program; African and African American Studies at Duke.

Your witness wanted: Attend Fire & Ink this fall.

Author Randall Kenan
will be the keynote speaker
at Fire & Ink, IV in Detroit.

Fire & Ink IV: Witness

October 8-11, Detroit, MI

REGISTER NOW!

"Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have."

—James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

Keynote speaker Randall Kenan is the author of a novel, A Visitation of Spirits; two works of non-fiction, Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century and The Fire This Time; and a collection of stories, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead. He edited and wrote the introduction for The Cross of Redemption: The Uncollected Writings of James Baldwin. Among his awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, the North Carolina Award, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Rome Prize. He is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Fire & Ink IV: Witness is a writers festival that will address the urgent question of what it means to bear witness as LGBTQ and SGL writers of African descent and heritage in the 21st century. Merriam-Webster offers these definitions of "witness": One that gives evidence. One who is present at an event and can say that it happened. One who testifies in a cause. An attestation of fact. One who has personal knowledge of something. Public affirmation by word or example of usually religious faith or conviction. We invite Black LGBTQ and SGL writers and artists to assay their own definitions of witness.

Fire & Ink is a nonprofit organization devoted to increasing the understanding, visibility and awareness of the works of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender writers of African descent and heritage.

MoCADA--and 651 Arts--on the move

Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts to Move to Larger New Space in Brooklyn
by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, May 27, 2015

In the name of freedom: Charlotte Brathwaite's "Prophetika: An Oratorio"

Prophetika: An Oratorio
Below, Jadele McPherson in the focal acting/singing role
(photos: Hao Bai)

So, it looks bad for the world. The only things left are shabby-glamorous or just shabby. The whole thing's hanging by a thread, and that thread is fraying fast.

If you're of the African diaspora, you might have a better grasp on what to do with what's left, making your way out of no way, in time-honored fashion, while making sure there's still some shine and style. Something that speaks of who you are, who you remain. Here and there, you scavenge the discards. Half-shredded tarp. Broken electronics. Dead branches pile outside a nest you will inhabit alone. You make a Buckminsterfullerene shelter. You cover yourself in shards of mirrors and face paint. You've still got that harp, miraculously intact, wondrously carved from warm-colored wood. At times, in the midst of your gasps and clicks and wordless cries, your body remembers old songs. And you remember charging rhythms and how it feels to be on the march. You remember ancestors. Malcolm X. Sun Ra. Harriet Tubman. Fanny Lou Hamer. You consider: How to get from here to there? You make of yourself a spaceship in violent vibration, aiming to clear the atmosphere.

Charlotte Brathwaite describes her new multidisciplinary piece, Prophetika: An Oratorio, as "part theatrical event, part visual art installation, part ritual ceremony," all of which says that it reawakens primal human urges and strategies. The Club at La MaMa serves as sacred ground for this conjuring of spirits by singer Jadele McPherson with musical support by composer-pianist Courtney Bryan, harpist Brandee Younger and sound designer Justin Hicks. The visual environment shaped by Abigail DeVille (installation, costumes), Kent Barrett (lighting) and Cauleen Smith (video art) suggests the obsessively repetitive, vaguely menacing dreamscape of what's left of the American dream--I question America. I question America. Who will play with Jane?--where, if you take a minute to focus more closely on things, you might see that they are both more ordinary than you imagined and more impossible than you'd feared. Or you might just rev up, break the seal and fly outta there.

Prophetika finds strength when music takes the foreground--strongest when McPherson stakes claim to the recently contested Take My Hand, Precious Lord and the familiar, maybe too familiar Four Women, lucid moments lucidly willed into a heavy, airless dream. One of Brathwaite's guiding "divine spirits," composer Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, described sacred music as a transcendent healer. Brathwaite and her collaborators clearly want to make that kind of offering with Prophetika but, sitting among last night's audience at La MaMa, I was uncertain about how it was being received, and I'm still unsure. Can this work, as a whole, move audiences to not merely sit back and gaze at the phenomena?

Prophetika: An Oratorio continues through Sunday, April 5 with Friday and Saturday performances at 10pm, Sundays at 6pm. For tickets, click here.

Post-performance conversations on Sundays:

The collaborators of Prophetika invite experts in the humanities and the arts, to participate in one of two informal conversations on core themes in this work including: Afro-futurism, spirituality, politics, activism, science, representation and the arts. The duration of all conversations will be 50 minutes.

March 22: “Transcendence” Discussion topics: Spirituality, Politics, and the Arts speakers: Kara Lynch, Dr. Matthew Morrison, Dr. Imani Perry, Imani Uzuri. Moderator:  Dr. Courtney Bryan

March 29: “Dark Matter” Discussion topics: Science, Technology, and the Arts speakers: Greg Tate, Didier Sylvain, Abigail DeVille. Moderator:  Charlotte Brathwaite

La MaMa The Club
74A East 4th Street, (between Bowery and Second Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Samuel Charters, 85

Samuel Charters, Foundational Scholar of the Blues, Dies at 85
by Larry Rohter, The New York Times, March 18, 2015

Fire & Ink IV conference requests your witness

Fire & Ink IV: Witness (October 8-11, 2015) will address the urgent question of what it means to bear witness as LGBTQ and SGL writers of African descent and heritage in the 21st century.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS (deadline for abstracts: February 15)

If you're interested in being part of the conversation at Fire & Ink IV: Witness, submit an abstract not exceeding 1,000 words by Sunday, February 15 to let us know what you're thinking and ensure priority consideration.

For complete information, click here to download the Call for Proposals.

ABOUT FIRE & INK

Fire & Ink, Incorporated is devoted to increasing the understanding, visibility and awareness of works of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and same gender loving writers of African descent and heritage. As part of our mission, Fire & Ink sponsors a writers' conference and we invite proposals for workshops and panel discussions from our communities' writers, teachers, thinkers and critics.

February is Black Artstory Month in Brooklyn!

Brooklyn's Hammerstep dance troupe
will perform and offer a lecture-demo
as part of the 3rd Annual Black Artstory Month.

It's time again for Black Artstory Month, presented by Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership and featuring a lineup of free programming!

Here are two of the many events offered now through the end of February:

Hammerstep on Myrtle
presented by Irish Arts Center
Saturday, February 7 (3-5pm)
Ingersoll Community Center, 177 Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn

In the late nineteenth century, Fort Greene—home to over half of Brooklyn's African American population— also became widely known as ''Young Dublin'' for the large Irish population that settled on what is now Myrtle Avenue. Black Artstory Month explores the intersecting histories of Irish and African American communities in Fort Greene with an unforgettable performance and lecture demonstration by Hammerstep, a Brooklyn-based contemporary dance company whose cutting-edge choreography melds traditional Irish dance, tap, step and hip hop to address contemporary social and political issues.

Click here for complete information and directions.

Remembering Rodeo Caldonia | Lisa Jones + Alva Rogers in conversation with Greg Tate
Pillow Cafe Lounge, 505 Myrtle Ave, Brooklyn
Friday, February 20 (6-8pm)

Take an insightful look at women artists of the black Brooklyn renaissance of the 1980s and 1990s, as profiled in Brooklyn Boheme, the recent HBO documentary by Nelson George. Writer Lisa Jones and writer/composer/performer Alva Rogers discuss the black women’s Fort Greene arts collective Rodeo Caldonia in a conversation facilitated by cultural critic Greg Tate.

Click here for complete information and directions.

Black women in ballet speak out: February 2 [UPDATED]

Dance Iquail, in partnership with Dance/NYC and HAA: Harlem Arts Alliance, will presents Black Swan: Solidarity Beyond Colored Pointe Shoes on Monday, February 2, 6:30pm at The Riverside Theater.

This free panel discussion of women of color in the ballet world "examines the importance of resilience as seen in the stresses on black artists, communities and institutions" and "how dance as an art form can help organizations and individuals adapt and recover from the stress of racial segregation, diminished resources, and social disenfranchisement."

Scheduled to speak:

Baraka Sele (moderator), Independent arts consultant, former VP of Programming at NJPAC

Zita Allen, dance historian

Delores Brown, former ballet dancer and teacher, member of NY Negro Ballet in 1957

Karen "KB" Brown, former Artistic Director Oakland Ballet

Andrea Long-Naidu,  former NYCB and DTH dancer

Iqail Shaheed, Artistic Director, Dance Iquail, choreographer of Black Swan, a new work set to the music of Nina Simone, exploring "the experience of the black ballerina as a window into issues of race, identity, and isolation"

Monday, February 2, 6:30pm (free admission)

Limited seating. RSVPs recommended: iquail@danceiquail.com

The Riverside Theater
The Riverside Church
91 Claremont Avenue, Manhattan
By Train - #1 to 116th and Columbia University
By Bus - M4, M104, M60 to 120th and Broadway
Enter on Claremont and 121st Street.

Celebrate Kwanzaa at NYC's African Burial Ground

African Burial Ground National Monument

celebrates Kwanzaa

Kwanzaa is an African-American holiday observed from December 26 through January 1, which focuses on the traditional African values of family, community responsibility, commerce and self improvement. The name Kwanzaa is derived from the phrase, “matunda ya kwanza” which means, “first fruits” in Swahili.

    Friday, December 26

        10-10:30am: Libation ceremony and introduction

        10:30-12pm: Drum and dance performance by Fusha Dance

        12pm-1pm: West African drumming class by Cumbe Dance

        1-2:30pm: The Works of Langston Hughes: Dramatic performance by David Mills

        2:30-3:30pm: The Cultural Philosophy of Kwanzaa: Celebrating the Rich Cultural Roots of Americans of African Descent: Dr. Patricia Leonard

    Saturday, December 27

        11am-12:40pm: Film Screening of Tula: The Revolt

        1pm-2:40pm: Film Screening of Tula: The Revolt

All events and activities are free and open to the public but on a first come first serve basis. Schedule is subject to change, please see our website or Facebook page for up-to-date information.

For questions regarding our event please do not hesitate to contact us at african_burial_ground@nps.gov or 212-238-4367.

African Burial Ground National Monument
290 Broadway, 1st Floor, Manhattan (directions)
(212) 238-4367

Cumbe's on the move: Celebrate on January 31

Brooklyn's three-year old Cumbe: Center for African and Diasporan Dance has been forced out of its Fulton Street home, the building sold to make way for a residential tower. The directors are seeking interim space for classes. (Ideas? Click here.) In the meantime, you're invited to join the Cumbe community for a night of dancing and music including a live performance by Brown Rice Family band and mini-dance classes with the center's teachers.

The Moving Party

Saturday, January 31st, 9pm

Admission: $10-$20 sliding scale

Founded by Dominique Bravo, Pat Hall, and Jimena Martinez, Cumbe is the new home for African and diaspora dance in Brooklyn, bringing together classes and cultural education for dances from Africa, the Americas, and the Caribbean. At Cumbe, young people, adults, and families alike immerse themselves in the joy and vitality of music and dance from the African diaspora.

Through a rich array of classes and dynamic teachers, students from novice to the experienced learn the rhythms and movements of Senegal, Guinea, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Haiti, and a broad range of other cultures. Performances, talks, and dance parties encourage a deeper understanding of the origins, meaning and evolution of these many dances, as well as connections between them. 
Marking life moments big and small, joyous and fierce, dances from Africa and countries nourished and inspired by African traditions bring tremendous spirit to our modern lives. Through dance and music, Cumbe creates a community that celebrates exuberance, sensuality, power, and laughter! We look forward to supporting this community as we continue to offer a selection of classes in various locations through Brooklyn while we search for our new home. After three wonderful years of African and diaspora dance, we invite you to keep moving with us!

For further information on Cumbe, the move and The Moving Party, click here.

Cumbe
558 Fulton Street, 2nd Floor (near Flatbush Avenue), Brooklyn
(map/directions)

An evening screening of films by dance artist Gabri Christa

Gabri Christa and Niles Ford
in Savoneta (2008)
(photo: Dolph van Stapele) 

Museum of the Moving Image

presents

Dancing with Our Past

film screening and live event

appearance by filmmaker/choreographer 

Gabri Christa

followed by a reception sponsored by 

Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands

Friday, October 24, 7pm

Gabri Christa
(photo: Malgorzata Headshot)

Born and raised in Curaçao, Dutch Caribbean, Gabri Christa came to filmmaking after a successful career as a choreographer and dancer. She choreographed and danced with companies such as Danza Contemporanea de Cuba (Cuba) and the Bill T. Jones Dance Company (United States). 

Christa's short films connect the relationship of historic buildings and sites to their environment, and reflect upon the people and cultures that inhabit them. Each film—Quarantine (2007, 10 mins.), Savoneta (2008, 14 mins.), and Kasita (2014, 21 mins.)—sheds a different light on Dutch history through dance, text, music, and movement. Filmed on the Dutch Caribbean islands of Curaçao and Bonaire, they tell stories of the Dutch African diaspora, from a time when Peter Stuyvesant was governor of both New Amsterdam and the Dutch Caribbean.

Space, Place and Memory

How to capture the memory of a space, the place where people lived, loved, fought, a place of such reverence all loaded with slavery's past? How does the body feel and deal with the memories of those feelings in that space? A body moving in space is very concrete, especially in an empty space. I could speak about form and shape and make it physical, but what drives me is more spiritual. I long to communicate a feeling, a smell, a memory, one that is not necessarily mine. I want to capture the spirit that still lingers and the flood of images, smells, stories that call out from behind the dust, or make an interpretation of that feeling crawling onto my skin. People once lived and worked here, and a space absent of them and their things still speaks loudly, begging not to be forgotten. So I am telling tales of sound, movement is what is left, without words and sometimes with. Glorious amidst a bright sun, now associated with a Caribbean vacation, but the past still lingers and is still relevant. How to capture that on film? How to imagine this in movement? Those essential questions I explore while I made these films and in all three I take a different approach, combining the old (music and dance) with the new (music dance image).

--Gabri Christa

For complete information and tickets, 

click here.

Dancing with Our Past is part of the Changing the Picture (2014) series, organized by Chief Curator David Schwartz and Warrington Hudlin.

This ongoing series celebrates and explores the work of film and television artists of color who are bringing diverse voices to the screen. The series, which consists of screenings and discussions with directors, writers, actors, scholars, and more, includes contemporary work as well as historically significant work that has played an important role in the evolving attempt to “change the picture” and bring a wider variety of voices and visions to the moving image. 

Click here for more information on Changing the Picture.

Museum of the Moving Image
36-01 35 Avenue (at 37th Street), Astoria, Queens
(map/directions)

Exploring the African diaspora of Argentina

Argentina Rediscovers Its African Roots
by Michael T. Luongo, The New York Times, September 12, 2014

Are the Gods Afraid of Black Sexuality?

Are The Gods Afraid of Black Sexuality?

Religion and the Burdens of Black Sexual Politics

A Conference

co-sponsored by

Barnard Center for Research on Women

and 

Institute for Research in African-American Studies, Columbia University

Thursday-Friday, October 23-24

We are living through a moment of tremendous change at the intersection of race, religion, and sexuality.This conference will bring together scholars, activists, and religious leaders to unearth and engage with the often-unstated claims about the African Diaspora in relation to gender and sexuality, exploring a range of historical and contemporary phenomena in both scholarship and lived experience.

Speakers include Anthea Butler, Kenyon Farrow, Darnell Moore, Alondra Nelson, Emilie Townes and more.

For complete information and registration, click here.