News
Dr. Earl Luis Stewart, will be interviewed by the Santa Barbara News Press on their radio station on Wednesday, August 3, 2011 at 2pm. Please turn your radio to station 1290 AM to listen!
The Department of Black Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara has lost a valiant soldier in the struggle for social justice teaching and scholarship. Early Wednesday morning, July 6, 2011, Associate Professor Clyde Woods passed away at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara at the age of 54. He leaves behind his son, Malik, and countless friends, students, and colleagues who love him.
Dr. Woods began his appointment at UCSB in fall 2005, having previously taught at Pennsylvania State University and the University of Maryland. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2009, the same year he became Acting Director of the Center for Black Studies Research. With a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning from UCLA, Dr. Woods innovated a unique research programme that engaged social and public policy issues by examining the cultural practices of those oppressed by such policies. His book, Development Arrested, is a model of interdisciplinary research that reframed the history of the Mississippi Delta by unearthing and interpreting the blues epistemology of its residents. At the time of his passing, Dr. Woods had just published In the Wake of Hurricane Katrina: New Paradigms and Social Visions (2010), a Johns Hopkins University Press book version of his special edited American Quarterly issue on Katrina, and was working on three additional books—Development Drowned and Reborn on Post-Katrina New Orleans (under review at University of California Press), a book on Black California that emerged from funded research at the Center for Black Studies Research, and a revised, updated version of Development Arrested. An original thinker and prolific scholar, Professor Woods believed the purpose of public social science was to explore and suture the links between knowledge embedded in communities of color and the knowledge disseminated by universities.
Dr. Jude Akudinobi has received a Non-Senate Faculty Professional Development Grant to support his research: "Nollywood In Deep Focus."
Professor Earl Stewart's new book "Vernacular Harmony" has just been published.
"Nigeria: Chukwunweike Maduekwe - Candidate for Posterity," an online opinion piece by Dr. Jude Akudinobi
Fellowship Nomination For One Of Our Black Studies Majors
Abrham Alem, a Black Studies major has been nominated by the UCSB Teacher Education Program for a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship.
The Teacher Education Program at UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School was chosen to receive Woodrow Wilson-Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellowships for Aspiring Teachers of Color (WW-RBF) beginning in the 2011-12 academic year. This designation allows the program to nominate two undergraduate students of color from UCSB for $30,000 fellowships and allow WW-RBF fellows from UCSB and other areas of the country to come to UCSB.
UC Haiti Summit Sets Stage for Continued Relief
Talks Emerge of System-Wide Aid Effort Coordinated by UCSB
With the intent of developing coordinated relief efforts among the UC campuses, the event opened with a series of keynote speeches, providing insight into the island country’s current situation. Talks included UCSB professor Dr. Claudine Michel’s address on Haitian history and the roots of inequity.
UC Aims to Help Haiti
Over 250 University of California students, staff and faculty convened at UC San Francisco on Saturday to discuss ways to help Haiti recover from January’s devastating earthquake.
Please note that Claudine Michel was the Keynote speaker and that she and Black Studies major Eziaku Nwokocha are quoted in the article.
George Lipsitz has just published a new book, "Midnight at the Barrelhouse- The Johnny Otis Story," a biography of the great R&B musician and bandleader, civil rights activist and preacher, John Alexander Veliotes.
You probably know him better as Johnny Otis.
The Center for Black Studies Research released the inagural issue of Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies. Professor George Lipsitz is Senior Editor.
Professor Earl Stewart participated in a London mini-conference on the contributions of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a late 19th Century Afro-British composer to Black America. Professor Stewart also visited Croydon, the composer's home.
10 minutes with ... Claudine Michel
Claudine Michel, Professor of Black Studies, sets the record straight on myths about Voodoo circulating in the wake of the recent earthquake in Haiti. Michel is also the editor of the Journal of Haitian Studies.
Damien Schnyder
Awarded UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow, 2009-2010
Damien Schnyder is a University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Black Studies at UC Santa Barbara.
His dissertation addressed the connection between the public education and prison systems. In conversation with the school-to-prison pipeline scholarship, Damien's dissertation analyzed the micro-processes by which public education as a state structure facilitates the movement of black male bodies into the labyrinth of the prison system. However, departing from the body of literature, he details how the public education structure is an ideological and pragmatic extension of the organizational logic of prison.
Building upon his dissertation project, Damien's current research as a postdoctoral scholar builds on his dissertation project and provides a needed analysis with regard to the effects of the expansion of the prison system upon public education. In addition, building upon the work of scholars of prison masculinity, his analysis will provide detailed linkages with respect to the construction of black masculinity by the prison and public education systems.
Damien received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin. He holds a M.A. in sociology and B.A. in African and African American Studies from Stanford University.
Visit the President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program website
Week-long International Conference:
"Women In Africa and the African Diaspora (WAAD)"
Over 200 women and men from 41 countries in five continents recently converged in Abuja under the auspices of the Association of African Women Scholars for a week-long international conference tagged: Women In Africa and the African Diaspora (WAAD).
Coordinated by Dr. Jude Akudinobi of the University of California, Santa Barbara, the WAAD Film Series tagged Tales-for-Thoughts ran throughout the summer conference from Monday to Friday.
"Black Hair, Still Tangled in Politics"
Professor Ingrid Banks is part of a New York Times discussion on the politics of straight or natural hair for black women, including Michelle Obama and her daughters.
Read Article.
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"In the Black Culture, a Richness of Hairstory"
Read the article at CNN about black culture that focuses on "Hairstory" and Ingrid Banks' forthcoming book on contemporary black beauty salon culture.
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THE GUARDIAN: Should You Straighten Your Afro Hair?
The issue of how black women wear their hair is more contentious than ever, according to a recent Gaurdian article.
Ingrid Banks, an Associate Professor of Black Studies, and author of Hair Matters: Beauty, Power, and Black Women's Consciousness, offers her expertise on Black popular and beauty culture.
Read more news at the Social Sciences Division website
George Lipsitz Visiting Fellow at Stanford
George Lipsitz is spending the 2008-2009 academic year as a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Compararive Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University. His work at the center includes research on "Colorblindness and the Court: School Desegregation, Race, and Space" and collaborating with Kimberle Crenshaw and Luke Harris on a book about affirmative action.
http://ccsre.stanford.edu/FP_visitFac.htm
http://ccsre.stanford.edu/RI_resInst.htm
Gaye Johnson Visiting Fellow at Stanford
Gaye Theresa Johnson is a visiting fellow at Stanford University in the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity for the 2008-2009 academic year. She is completing a manuscript entitled "The Future Has a Past: Politics, Culture, and Memory in Afro-Chicano Los Angeles." She also researched and wrote a paper on the "sal-soul" music of Celia Cruz and the Fania All-Stars at the Zaire music festival in 1974.
http://ccsre.stanford.edu/FP_visitFac.htm
http://ccsre.stanford.edu/RI_resInst.htm
Ingrid Banks Visiting Scholar at Russell Sage
Ingrid Banks is a 2008-2009 Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York City. During the Fall Semester at Russell Sage, she will complete a paper that examines contemporary manifestations of segregation and integration in black beauty salons as part of a larger multi-city ethnographic study on black beauty salon culture.
https://www.russellsage.org/scholars/byYear?year=2008%20-%202009
Professor Jeffrey Stewart Curates Black History Month Exhibition
Hemphill Galleries
Washington, DC
January 31 to March 7, 2009
"Myself" by John Robinson
Jude Akudinobi Interview
Professor Jude Akudinobi was interviewed and cited in the major Chilean/Latin American paper, 'El Mercurio.'
Article in Spanish.
Cedric Robinson Receives Errol Hill Award
Professor Cedric Robinson was the 2008 winner of the Errol Hill Award which is given by the American Society for Theatre Research.
Claudine Michel Receives Award from Haitian Studies Assoc.
Claudine Michel, Professor of Black Studies at UC Santa Barbara and Director of the campus's Center for Black Studies Research, has received the Haitian Studies Association Service Award.
The award recognizes Michel's commitment to the advancement of Haitian studies, particularly as editor of the association's official publication, The Journal of Haitian Studies. The award was presented earlier this month at the organization's annual meeting in Port Au Prince.
Read the complete Press Release
Black Studies Newsletters
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