Departments
Publication from the Brooklyn College Afro-American Theater Workshop (circa 1970)
Africana Studies
Modibo, a bulletin published by the Brooklyn College Department of Africana Studies during its early days, sets out to describe how the department came about:
In the late 1960's, the number of black students enrolled at Brooklyn College increased significantly. They arrived only to find a typical white American university, one whose values and emphases were Eurocentric. Disturbed by this situation, the black students and some faculty demanded an academic unit concerned with their history and their culture.
The Brooklyn College Institute of Afro-American Studies was launched in 1970. This eventually led to the formation of the interdisciplinary Department of Afro-American Studies. In 1974 the department was renamed the Department of Africana Studies. Africana Studies experienced growing pains as it pushed to develop its programs, courses, faculty, and majors, and gain autonomy and the accompanying benefits of creating an appointments committee strictly of its own faculty and elect its own chair. The first chair of the department was Daniel E. Mayers; Professor Lynda Day currently serves as department chair.
The current academic year has been a busy one for the department. Africana Studies started off the 2017–18 academic year with a symposium on hip hop in Brooklyn with several local artists invited to share their perspectives on their art form as well as the messages and context of their work. Black History Month was marked with a lecture series including Professor Christopher Douglas speaking about "The Death and Life of Malcom X," Professor Moses Davies lecturing on "Africa's Early Contacts with Europe and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade" and "Slave Rebellions in Africa, the Caribbean and the U.S.," and Professor Aleah Ranjitsingh presenting "Groundings with My Brothers: Walter Rodney and the Legacy of Pan-Africanism and Black Power." Africana Studies also held a special screening of the new film A Song for Our People.
At the end of the month, the department co-sponsored the John Hope Franklin Day panel, "African American History in the Public Sphere," with David Blight and John W. Franklin, Jr. In the evening, Conservatory of Music Professor Malcolm Merriweather conducted a Freedom Concert, interweaving prose, poetry, and music. Additionally, the CUNY Haitian Studies Institute, which opened its doors at Brooklyn College in 2016 under the direction of Professor Jean Eddy Saint Paul, has sponsored an exhibit of Haitian American artists, Haiti Through the Eyes of Its Artists, this past semester.
As part of the March program "Conversations on Race and Performance: Investigating the Intersection of Race, Gender and Disability," Ato Quayson delivered a keynote address followed by a reading, "Unruly Pastorals: Declensions of Nature in the Novels of Toni Morrison." Quayson is a professor of English and the inaugural director of the Centre for Diaspora Studies at the University of Toronto. An evening event featured Brooklyn College Mellon Transfer Students presenting a staged reading of Lydia Diamond's play adaptation of Tony Morrison's Bluest Eye.
The Africana Studies faculty are very active in many areas.
- Assistant Professor Dale Byam, director of the Caribbean Studies Program, just returned from a sabbatical in Brazil doing research on a indigenous form of Carnival with roots in the African traditions retained since the days of slavery. She was also the principal organizer of a Brooklyn College panel, Climate Justice in the Caribbean, in mid-November. She was a respondent at the CARICOM conference at the U.N. on climate change, and she planned the March program Conversations on Race and Performance.
- Associate Professor Prudence Cumberbatch is the coordinator of Women's and Gender Studies. She was invited to contribute to a workshop on black feminism/intersectionality and capitalism at San Diego State in January and a talk at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore on "MLK, African-American Women, and the Civil Rights Movement."
- Professor George Cunningham continues to support the Black and Latino Male Initiative, of which he was a co-founder.
- Professor Lynda Day was invited to give a talk on the "Black History of Long Island" for the Wyandanch Public Library's final Black History Month Program. She gave a talk on "Slave Rebellions in the U.S., the Caribbean and South America" as part of a BHM program at the Ebenezer Seventh Day Adventist Church in Freeport. She also gave a talk on the Jamaican Maroons at a charter school in Brooklyn.
- Assistant Professor Zinga Fraser is the director of the Shirley Chisholm Project on Brooklyn Women's Activism. She is on an American Association of University Women sponsored research leave completing her manuscript which compares the careers of two African American Congresswomen, Barbara Jordan and Shirley Chisholm. She is featured on the Elle documentary, Braided: An American Hair Story. She is planning a major 50th anniversary celebration of Chisholm's historic run for president for Shirley Chisholm Day in November 2018.
Courses of special interest taught in the department this academic year include a new Special Topics course cross-listed with English, Writing Black Women's Futures, taught by poet and author Keisha-Gaye Anderson. Anderson is also the director of news and information in the Brooklyn College Office of Communications and Marketing. The course explores concepts of gender in Afro-futurism. The class went to a screening of Black Panther, a current example of Afro-futurism. The Blacks and the Law course was taught in fall 2017 by attorney Kenneth Montgomery, a Brooklyn federal prosecutor.
Studying in Africana Studies does not limit one to course work covered on the Brooklyn College campus. The department's 10th study abroad in Ghana program is scheduled for the second summer session 2018. The current iteration of the trip was inspired by Day's Fulbright year in Ghana that ran from 1999 to 2000. Byam has led two more recent trips, one in 2009 and one in 2014. More than 60 students have been a part of the program since it was re-initiated in 2002. The program first ran in 1975 and positioned the department for other similar ventures. Attempts to offer study abroad to Haiti in 1982 were turned down by the college, which cited "unrest" in the country as a deterrent. The Africana Studies Department argued that there was no U.S. State Department warning against travel to Haiti at the time, and remained undaunted in its recognition of the importance of travel for a fuller education. Regine LaTortue eventually did lead a study abroad trip to Haiti. and Professor Bert Thomas led trips to Trinidad, Panama, and Jamaica. In 1985 the department offered a successful black history tour of the American South.
The richness of its course offerings and the strength of its faculty have enabled the Department of Africana Studies to grow and persevere no matter what the political or social climate. In the mid-1970s, when the CUNY open admissions policy came under attack and admissions testing was to be put in place, the Africana Studies program wrote an impassioned position paper, declaring:
The Board's resolution, in effect, shuts the door on most students who graduate from public school. Since approximately 90% of the New York City public school population is Black and Puerto Rican, the result is that most Black and Puerto Rican high school graduates will not be admitted to CUNY. The move toward and all-white elitist university is justified under the guise of upholding academic standards in the face of a server fiscal crisis....While no one can argue against upholding academic standards, there is no evidence that academic standards have been lowered due to open admissions.
Today the Department of Africana Studies remains strong and continues to offer a solid, multi-disciplinary major for any student interested in the liberal arts. There was much to celebrate at the 2014 40th anniversary party, as there still is today.
Back to Critical Thinking — April 2018
