Fall 2009 Events
The Legacy of Lincoln: A Colloquium
Friday, October 2, 2009
53 Wall Street, Whitney Humanities Center
1:30 pm, followed by a reception at 6:00 pm
This colloquium on the legacies of Abraham Lincoln features two panel discussions with historians David W. Blight, David Bromwich, Stephen Skowronek, Caleb Smith, Steven Smith, and Michael Warner. The afternoon event is followed by a reception at 6:00 pm.
This event is co-sponsored by the Gilder Lerman Center and the Yale University Department of English.
"Dey Take Indian For Slave": Visions of Enslavement in Marcus Rediker's The Slave Ship and Barry Unsworth's Sacred Hunger
Monday, October 5
230 Prospect Street, Room 101
12:00 pm
While dramatically altering understandings of the American colonial experience, studies of slavery in the Americas often overlook the place of American Indians in the Atlantic World, and in this presentation Professor Ned Blackhawk examines the triangle trade within two prize-winning narratives of Atlantic slavery.
This lecture is part of the GLC Brown Bag Lunch Series. Bring your lunch and the GLC will provide drinks and dessert.
African American Studies at Yale: Reflections at 40
Tuesday, October 6
81 Wall Street, Gordon Parks 201
Lunch available at 11:45 am, Discussion begins at noon
Richard J. Powell, John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art and Art History at Duke University and one of the first scholars to receive an advanced degree in African American Studies from Yale University. Later that day, Professor Powell will give a formal lecture and receive the Wilbur Cross Medal, the highest honor bestowed by Yale's graduate school upon its alums.
Master's Tea: Robin Kelley, Professor of History and American Studies, USC
Monday, October 12
Calhoun College
4:30 pm
Professor Kelley will be talking about his newest book Thelonius Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original. There will be a book signing immediately following the tea.
In the Falling Snow: An Evening with Caryl Phillips
Monday, October 12
Labyrinth Books, 290 York Street
Time TBA
Please join us for a celebration of the US publication of Caryl Phillip’s latest novel, In the Falling Snow. The novel captures issues of diasporicity, class, and race in the late modern world through the story of both a man - Keith - at a turning point in his life and of a society moving from one notion of itself to another. For more information on Phillips and his work, please visit his website.
Event co-sponsored by the Initiative on Race Gender and Globalization and Labyrinth Books
Keeping up a distinction of Colour: Gender, Race, and Identity in the British Caribbean and the Metropolis during the Eighteenth Century
Brooke Newman, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Aberdeen
Monday, October 12
34 Hillhouse Avenue, Luce Hall Room 103
12:00 pm
Brooke Newman explores how West Indian identities -- white, black, and mixed-race -- were defined and contested during the eighteenth century, both by West Indians themselves and by metropolitan Britons who imagined, critiqued, and caricatured the inhabitants of the sugar islands. More than anything else in these slave societies, Newman demonstrates, gender relations and racial mixture undermined white West Indian attempts at collective self-definition.
This lecture is part of the GLC Brown Bag Lunch Series. Bring your lunch and the GLC will provide drinks and dessert.
Conversation with Madison Moore on Beyoncé's album, I Am Sasha Fierce
Thursday, October 15
81 Wall Street, Room 201
11:45 - 1:15 pm
Lunch will be served
Madison Moore is currently a fourth-year graduate student in American Studies at Yale University and freelance pop culture columnist at Splicetoday.com. He is the recipient of the Beinecke Fellowship for Graduate Study and the Ford Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellowship. Research interests include modern and contemporary art, glamour studies, performance studies, black popular culture, luxury industries, street art and urbanism.
Sponsored by Endeavors: Perspectives on Black Life and Culture
Southerners on the Run: Emancipation, Desertion, and the Collapse of the Old South
Yael Sternhell, Gilder Lehrman Center Postdoctoral Fellow
Wednesday, October 21
230 Prospect Street, Room 101
12:00 pm
The Civil War thrust on the roads of the Confederacy multitudes of truants: slaves fleeing their masters, soldiers deserting the army, and refugees retreating in the face of enemy invasion. Flight was a rare common experience in the Confederate South, which cut across race, class, and gender lines. In this talk, Sternhell examines how runaways of all hues shaped the downfall of slavery and the rise of black freedom and how antebellum hierarchies were reconfigured through the physical act of motion.
This lecture is part of the GLC Brown Bag Lunch Series. Bring your lunch and the GLC will provide drinks and dessert.
John Brown, Slavery, and the Legacies of Revolutionary Violence in Our Own Time: A Conference Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Harpers Ferry Raid
October 29-31
See the GIlder Lehrman Center's website for more details on its 11th annual international conference.
New Directions in Caribbean Studies Inter-institutional Network Meeting
Thursday and Friday, November 5-6
David Scott, Keynote Address on Thursday at 4:30 pm, 10 Sachem Street, 105
New Directions in Caribbeans Studies aims to question the place of Caribbean Studies in the global present at the level of conception, trajectory, and the political. Working interdisciplinary across interpretive platforms in the humanities and social sciences, NEW DIRECTIONS IN CARIBBEAN STUDIES aims to come to grips with the relationship of Caribbean Studies to both modern and late modern social formations. Professor David Scott (Columbia University) will deliver the keynote for the event. Professor Scott is an internationally recognized scholar of Caribbean Studies. Since completing his last book, Conscripts of Modernity, he has oriented himself to the question of Third World sovereignty. Professor Scott also edits the academic journal Small Axe. Please note that only the keynote event will be open to the public.
New Directions in Caribbean Studies Inter-institutional Network
* Hazel Carby, Department of African American Studies and American Studies, Yale University
* Kamari Clarke, Department of Anthropology, Yale University
* Aisha Khan, Department of Anthropology, New York University
* Wayne Modest, University of London
* Caryl Phillips, Department of English, Yale University
* David Scott, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University
* Deborah Thomas, Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania
Co-sponsored by the IRGG, the Center for Transnational Cultural Analysis, the Departments of African American Studies and Anthropology, and the Dorothy Clarke Kemf Memorial Fund
Film Screening: We Aren't Dead Anymore/Nous ne sommes plus morts (part one)
Wednesday, November 11
Whitney Humanities Center Auditorium, 53 Wall Street
8:00 pm
Cameroonian filmmaker François Woukoache will introduce and screen his film about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
Conversation with Leon Wainwright, Manchester Metropolitan University
Thursday, November 12
81 Wall Street, Gordon Parks Room 201
11:45 am - 1:15 pm lunch will be served
Dr. Wainwright will discuss his forthcoming projects, including monographs relating to an assembled community of black artists in contemporary Britain, and British and Caribbean relations in the visual arts.
Sponsored by Endeavors: Perspectives on Black Life and Culture
Blonde Roots: An Evening with Bernadine Evaristo, Moderated by Caryl Phillips
Monday, November 16
Labyrinth Books, 290 York Street
5:30 pm
Please join us for a discussion and celebration of the publication of Bernadine Evaristo’s latest novel Blonde Roots. The novel explores many social, ethical, and historical issues: the most controversial of all being the reversal of the transatlantic slave trade. The novel concerns itself what it means for Africans to assume the role of mastery over Europeans. Please visit her website for further information. Caryl Phillips, Professor of English at Yale University, will moderate the discussion and serve as interlocutor.
This event co-sponsored by Labyrinth Books.
Spoken Word Performance and Reading: Because when God is too Busy: Haiti, me, and THE WORLD
Gina Athena Ulysse, Wesleyan University
Wednesday, November 18
10 Sachem Street, Room 105
6:00 - 8:00 pm
How did Haiti--the enfant terrible of the Americas become the béte noire of the region? In her dramatic monologue Gina Athena Ulysse uses history, ethnography, and song to consider how the past occupies the present. She weaves spokenword with Vodou chants to reflect on her childhood memories, social (in)justice, spirituality, and the incessant dehumanization of Haitians. Ultimately, she offers critical musings on geopolitics from the perspective of a Haitian-American woman who is bent on loving Haiti, loving Vodou and herself despite the odds.
Sponsored by Endeavors: Perspectives on Black Life and Culture
An Evening with Thomas Glave, moderated by Caryl Phillips
Monday, December 7
Labyrinth Books, 290 York Street
Time TBA
Thomas Glave is an award winning author and currently visiting Professor for 2008-09 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Glave is author of Whose Song? and Other Stories, nominated by the American Library Association for their “Best Gay/Lesbian Book of the Year” award and by the Quality Paperback Book Club for their Violet Quill/Best New Gay/Lesbian Fiction Award. For more information on Thomas Glave, please visit his website.
This event co-sponsored by Labyrinth Books.
