Director’s Welcome

Africana Studies Welcome Letter 2024-2025
Greetings and welcome!
This year, it has taken me far longer than usual to write my 2024 welcome letter. Whether it is the genocidal violence raging in Palestine and Sudan right now; the US backed occupation of Haiti by Kenyan police; or the divisive tensions around the recent presidential election in the US, it has been difficult for me to find words to best inaugurate a new academic year. While the circumstances that left me largely listless remain the same, I am encouraged and inspired by the people who make up our Africana Studies community—faculty dedicated to educating and protecting students, students working to imagine and build a better world, and community partners steadfastly advocating for justice in Roxbury and other parts of Boston. I am buoyed by my Africana Studies colleagues and comrades throughout the network and beyond, who are championing the importance of rigorous thinking along with resistance and refusal. THIS is who we are in Africana Studies and also explains why we do what we do.
Our Fall 2024/Spring 2025 programming reflects this ethic of resistance, refusal, and care that embodies the power and relevance of Africana Studies. In September we hosted the United States premiere of The Fight for Haiti/ Batay pou Ayiti, a documentary by award winning journalist and filmmaker Etant Dupain. The film captures the unrelenting courage and tireless advocacy of the so-called “Petro Challengers” a group of young activists in Haiti at the forefront of a movement demanding government accountability and transparency. This anti-corruption group is a salient reminder that we must be the change we want to see in the world no matter the circumstance. In her new book of essays, We’re Alone, Edwidge Danticat writes, “A country is only as strong as the people who make it up and the country turns into what the people want it to become.” This film, the activists it features, and the movement it documents remind us that Haitians have always resisted.
Resistance was also the theme of our annual “Re-imagining Together” lecture in October. Our keynote speaker was historian Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson whose latest book We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance is unflinching in its championing of revolution, refusal, protection, and joy. Our community was so moved by Dr. Carter Jackson’s presentation that we have decided to read We Refuse together for our book club in Spring 2025. In November, we hosted Dr. Orisanmi Burton presenting from his new book Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression and the Long Attica Revolt. The standing room only crowd for each of these events and the diversity of our attendants—students, faculty, community members, and local activists attests the importance of public conversations through which we can gather, reflect, and imagine different worlds together.
Our class offerings in Africana Studies also reflect this determination to transform the world through critical inquiry and sober evaluations of the past. Classes such as Introduction to Africana Studies, Black Feminist Studies, Afro-Latin American Studies, Black Abolition Studies, Global Caribbean, as well as Race, Crime and Justice among others speak to the breadth and the depth of our program’s commitment to interdisciplinarity, intersectionality, local and global approaches to the Black world.
Looking forward to the spring semester, we eagerly anticipate the fifth annual bell hooks symposium, which will take place on Friday, February 7, 2025. This year’s theme “Black Feminism, Black Art” affirms the impact of art and creativity that takes seriously race, gender, and justice.
As the reality of these disconcerting times continues to unfold, I remain encouraged by our history, our ancestors, and the many examples of artists, academics, and activists who are imagining and building other worlds. These are people like Black feminist abolitionist Mariame Kaba whose words remain a guiding light to inspire us: “When I would feel overwhelmed by what is going on in the world, I would just say to myself, ‘Hope is a discipline’. It’s less about how you feel, and more about the practice of making a decision every day, that you’re still going to put one foot in front of the other…It’s work to be hopeful.” May we, together, continue this work.
With gratitude and in solidarity,