On Wednesday afternoon the Department of African & African American Studies will launch its 50th anniversary speaker series with Duke alum Ashon Crawley.
Crawley, Ph.D., ‘13, will deliver a talk, “Migration Stories and the Hammond Sound,” at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 18 in the Moyle Room of the newly opened Karsh Alumni and Visitor’s Center (2080 Duke University Rd., Durham).
The talk is free and open to the public. Free parking is available across the street in the gravel lot. A reception will follow the talk.
Each month, the department will host a lecture by scholars who have been immersed in black studies at Duke. All of the talks will be held at 4:30 p.m. in the Karsh Center.
“The series is an opportunity to acknowledge the impact of Black Studies on the Duke University campus, and there’s no better way to do that than to highlight the fine scholars whose research was directed by current and former members of AAAS faculty, said Mark Anthony Neal, the James B. Duke Professor of African & African American Studies and chair of the department. “The scholars presenting in the series have emerged as some of the leading voices in the field of Black Diaspora Studies.”
Crawley, who earned a Ph.D. in English and a certificate in African & African American Studies at Duke, is an associate professor of Religious Studies and African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia, is the author of “Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility.”
He is also author of the forthcoming, “The Lonely Letters,” described as an exploration of the interrelation of blackness, mysticism, quantum mechanics and love.
Next month, on Oct. 14, Courtney R. Baker, Ph.D. ‘08, an associate professor of English at the University of California, Riverside will give a talk, “Black Humanity, Visible Violence, and Liberation Aesthetics.”
For more information on the Department of African & African American Studies, visit aaas.duke.edu.
AAAS 50th Anniversary Speaker Series
Oct. 14 Courtney R. Baker, Ph.D. ‘08, University of California, Riverside
Nov. 11 Patrick Alexander, Ph.D. ‘12, University of Mississippi
Dec. 4 Kinohi Nishikawa, Ph.D. ‘10, Princeton University
Jan. 30 Candis Watts Smith, Ph.D. ‘11, Penn State
Feb. 27 Candice Jenkins, WSTC ‘01, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
TBA Danny Hoffman, Ph.D. ‘04, University of Washington
