African American Studies Professor, Dr. Raven Lloyd, Publishes First Book
‘The battle for memory’: Mustakeem on the intertwining histories of race and medicine
Sowande M. Mustakeem, in Arts & Sciences, discusses her seminar “Medicine, Healing and Experimentation in the Contours of Black History” and the importance of grappling with traumatic history.
Rwanda’s privatized polis and the people in the path of progress
“When most non-Rwandans hear ‘Kigali’ or ‘Rwanda,’ they often think one word: ‘genocide,’” says Samuel Shearer, assistant professor in the Department of African and African-American Studies and a Faculty Fellow in the Center for the Humanities. Shearer’s book-in-progress, “The Kigali After: A New City for the End of the World,” examines how this limited view of the city and its 1.2 million citizens has paved the way for outside investors to treat it as a clean slate on which to build an idealized, privatized, sustainable city of the future. “The (mostly non-Rwandan) authors of the Kigali City Master Plan claim to be rebuilding it from the ruins of the past,” Shearer says. “But Kigali residents have already rebuilt their own city.”
Cunningham and Ward share Mellon Foundation grant for project on the virality of racial terror
WashU faculty seek student partners in new Civil Rights & Restorative Justice Action Research Lab
The WU-CRRJ Action Research Lab led by Professors Cunningham and Ward will engage WashU undergraduate and graduate students in field research needed to investigate racially-motivated homicides in Missouri (1930-1954) in support of case investigations and restorative justice efforts led by teams of law faculty and students in the award-winning Civil Rights and Restorative Justice (CRRJ) Clinic at Northeastern University Law School.
Bones in our Basement: WU re-evaluates its acquisition of human remains
WashU’s osteology collection still contains specimens from nearly 1800 individuals from St. Louis and wider Missouri, many of them African Americans, who probably never consented to being collected for use in research and teaching.
Memory studies beyond the classroom
A new StudioLab graduate course explores trauma and memory in community spaces beyond campus.
AFAS major uses Summer Research Award to Promote the Visibility of Black Women’s Stories in Rural Mississippi
In the research and film project, “Mississippi Mud: Visibility for Black Women’s Stories in Rural Mississippi,” AFAS major Leandrea Clay uses oral histories, archival materials, photographs, and other sources to share the stories of three generations of women in her hometown of Centreville, Mississippi.
Medical, scientific racism revealed in century-old plaque from Black man’s teeth
Analysis opens new avenues for studying diseases of the past, will raise standards of working with racially sensitive collections, experts say.
Something in the water
Researchers in Arts & Sciences examine environmental injustice along waterways, shifting the current toward a more equitable future.
"What, wait, you mean the founder of Wash U was not a fighter for Black people's freedom and rights in the US?!"
This article was written in tandem with a 10-month-long research project by students (including c/o '23 AFAS major Detric Henderson) under the guidance of Professor Iver Bernstein and Professor Carl Craver, with the end goal being that this research would support a new first-year Ampersand course entitled, “Rethinking WashU’s Relation to Enslavement: Past, Present, and Future.”
WashU faculty look to advance scholarship on legacies of racial violence
In an effort to advance research and policy addressing legacies of racial violence, three Washington University faculty members — David Cunningham, Hedwig Lee and Geoff Ward — have co-edited a special issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
Rafia Zafar guest edits African American Review’s special issue on Arturo Alfonso Schomburg
This special issue of African American Review remembers, recharges, and reimagines the legacy of Afro-Borinqueño visionary Arturo Alfonso Schomburg.
Maragh-Lloyd Spotlighted in the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies
In this interview with JCMS Professor Maragh-Lloyd discusses the nuances of race, resistance, and technology.
AFAS faculty help lead WashU & Slavery, a new initiative in CRE2
Several AFAS faculty are helping to lead Washington University's participation in Universities Studying Slavery, a global consortium of nearly eighty universities across five countries engaged in examining how their institutional histories are entangled with histories and legacies of slavery. The project, WashU & Slavery, is based in the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity (CRE2).
Professor Mutonya Awarded Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship
This interdisciplinary project involves graduate training and research focusing on the intersections of language, migration, urban settlement, and identity construction within enclaves of African immigrants residing in Nairobi.
'Born a slave, died a chef': Professor Rafia Zafar on food and the fight for civil rights
Geoff Ward wins 2019 W.E.B. Du Bois Award
The award is granted annually to an individual who has made significant career contributions to advancing awareness of racial and ethnic issues in criminology and criminal justice.
Monique Bedasse receives Wesley-Logan Prize in African diaspora history
Sponsored by the American Historical Association and the Association for the Study of African American Life & History, the prize is awarded annually for an outstanding book on the African diaspora.
WashU linguist analyzes American dialects, discrimination
John Baugh Discusses Code Switching in St. Louis Public Radio Interview.
Mungai Mutonya presents at the 20th International Congress of Linguists in Cape Town, South Africa
In his paper entitled 'Language contact and Swahili hybridity in Nairobi from the early 1900s to Unbwogable,' Mutonya explores undocumented Swahili varieties spoken by marginalized Nairobians.
Monique Bedasse receives black studies book award
Bedasse's 2017 book “Jah Kingdom: Rastafarians, Tanzania, and Pan-Africanism in the Age of Decolonization” won the Anna Julia Cooper & CLR James Award for outstanding scholarly publication in Africana studies.
On Topic: The history of black studies with Gerald Early
by Rosalind Early of The Source
AFAS 2017-2018 Postdoctoral Search
African Oral History
AFAS launches a new project that focuses on the oral histories of Kenyan WWII veterans and St. Louis' African immigrants.
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