Past Events

Dance historian, dancer, and choreographer John Perpener III comments on Suite Blackness: Black Dance in Cinema as part of this year’s Paul R. Jones lecture on Tuesday, Feb. 21. 

Perpener authored the book African-American Concert Dance: The Harlem Renaissance and Beyond and served as a primary consultant and commentator for the PBS documentary “Free to Dance”.

A unique and exciting theatrical experience that celebrates the powerful social, and historical impact of Black dance in film.​

This dance performance is a journey through racial and cultural tensions from the 1920s to present day – Showcasing films such as “Stormy Weather”, “The Wiz”, and “Rize”; and artists like Bill Bojangles Robinson, Josephine Baker, and Michael Jackson.​​

Performance Dates:

• Thursday, February 16th, 2023, at 7:30PM.
• Friday, February 17th 2023, at 7:30PM.
• Saturday, February 18th 2023, at 2PM.

This virtual event will reveal findings from an archival research project that delves into UD’s history as one of 52 Land Grant Universities. Speakers will explain how UD benefits, how UD is directly connected to the dispossession of American Indians, and how Land Grant Universities across the country are responding to these revelations.

Speakers include: Maureen Ipenski, UD History graduate student researcher and Stephen M. Gavazzi, Professor of Human Development and Family Science and Director of Center for Human Resource Research at The Ohio State University.

Join the UD Anti-Racism Initiative and CAS Humanities for a virtual lecture featuring, Victor Ray, author of On Critical Race Theory: Why It Matters and Why You Should Care. Dr. Ray is the F. Wendell Miller Associate Professor in the Departments of Sociology and Criminology and African American Studies at the University of Iowa and a Nonresident Fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution. His work has won multiple awards, including the early career award from the American Sociological Association’s Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities and the Southern Sociological Society’s Junior Scholar Award. Victor Ray’s work has been funded by the Ford Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.

Join us on zoom for a virtual showcase featuring the great work of the University of Delaware Anti-Racism Initiative Partners on September 21 at 3:00 PM. You’ll hear research highlights from:

• Dr. Kisha Porcher, UDARI Faculty Summer Scholar
• Dr. Cresean Hughes, UDARI Faculty Summer Scholar
• Elisa Davila, UDARI Intern, Campus Tour Committee–Black History StoryMap
• Julia Mun, UDARI Graduate Summer Scholar, Asian American Anti-Racism Initiative Committee
• Maureen Iplenski, UDARI Graduate Summer Scholar, American Indian and Indigenous Relations Committee
• Dr. Roger Horowitz, Special Collections Exhibit–Oral History Interviews: African Americans and the University of Delaware
• Margaret Hughes, UDARI Graduate Summer Scholar, Legacies of Enslavement and Dispossession Committee
• Zarah Zurita, UDARI Summer Undergraduate Scholar, Intimate Partner Violence
• Angela Tran, UDARI Summer Undergraduate Scholar, Linguistic Justice in English Secondary Ed
• Dr. Kopo Veronicah Oromeng, Anti-Racism Programming Committee – Unearthing the Collection: An Interactive Workshop at the Mineralogical Museum

Join the Asian American Committee of UDARI at their workshop for school teachers on June 2nd, 2022 from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. They will be hosting numerous sessions, including “Recognizing Implicit Biases in the Classroom” and “Online Resources for Asian American Antiracism.”

May 19, 2022: General UDARI Meeting

Hello! On Thursday, May 19^th at 3pm, we are holding a general meeting for all those involved in all UDARI committees (formerly called subcommittees) and initiatives. We will showcase some of the amazing projects we have undertaken, from committee initiatives to student and faculty research on race and anti-racism.

We will leave much of the time for planning for next year and considering next steps. We welcome your feedback and suggestions before and during the meeting.

This lecture, on April 5th from 12:30 to 1:30, considers the category of “refuse slaves, ” those designated sickly and sometimes unsellable by slave traders in the era of the transatlantic slave trade. By thinking with and against Orlando Patterson’s famous concept of “Social Death” describing the general condition of enslavement, Fuentes troubles the concept in reference to “refuse slaves, ” the archive, and the trends in the historiography of the slave trade.

Marisa J. Fuentes is the Presidential Term Chair in African American History and Associate Professor of History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University. Her publications include the award-winning book Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive (2016). Her most recent work appears in Small Axe, English Language Notes, and Diacritics. Fuentes’ new research focuses on the transatlantic slave trade, racial capitalism, and black disposability.

Students, faculty, and staff are invited to participate in the Museum Studies Program’s upcoming UD Anti-Racism Initiative-funded “Unearthing the Collection” Workshop Series. Please join current UD PhD students Kopo Oromeng (Geography) and LaMar Gayles (Art Conservation), and former UD post-doc Ellie Armstrong (University of London PhD in Museum Studies, now a postdoc at Stockholm University), along with a trio of internationally recognized scholars in the field for a three-part exploration of the history and provenance of geology collections, including at our own UD Mineralogical Museum. Pre-registration is required.

What might it look like to do anti-racist science communication with rocks? How can we unpack how geology and mineralogy have their roots in colonial science for audiences?

This event will be taking place in multiple sessions: 9:00-12:30 on March 1st, 15th, and 22nd. Join via Zoom for the first two session, and join in-person (location TBD) for the third session.

In the first two sessions (March 1st, 15th), we will hear from researchers (speakers listed below) with experience working on anti-racist and anti-colonial practices in physical science museums. Participants will then spend the third workshop session (March 22nd) developing speculative anti-racist science communication interventions.

Our speakers include;

• Dr. Chitra Ramalingam (Historian of Science, Yale University),
• Dr. Selby Cull-Hearth (Professor of Geology, Bryn Mawr),
• Florence Okoye (UX designer, Natural History Museum, London)

This workshop is ideal for learners interested in science communication, informal learning, mineralogical research, Geology, Geography and other Geosciences, museum studies – particularly physical science museums, anti-racist practice.

Dr. Alaina E. Roberts explores the actions and rhetoric of Black and Native people in Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma) in the nineteenth century. She argues that in this time and space, these people used an exploitative process (what she calls the settler colonial process) to unite their nations and realize freedom and opportunity for themselves. This presentation will make you question the ideas you have about victims and victimizers, oppressed people and oppressors.

Alaina E. Roberts is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. In addition to her first book, I’ve Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021), and multiple academic articles, her writing has appeared in the Washington Post and TIME magazine and her work has been profiled by CNN and the Boston Globe.

Dr. Araujo explores how the study of material culture can inform the history of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. Using objects manufactured in Europe, Africa, and the Americas during the 18th and 19th centuries, Professor Araujo will first discuss the notion of a “gift.” Then she will examine how Africans developed tastes for particular European-manufactured items and how these objects have been displayed in museums.

Dr. Ana Lucia Araujo is a Professor of History at the historically black Howard University in Washington DC. She has authored or edited 13 books on the history and memory of Atlantic slavery, including Slavery in the Age of Memory: Engaging the Past (2020). An editorial board member of the American Historical Review and Slavery and Abolition, Dr. Araujo is currently working on The Gift: How Objects of Prestige Shaped the Atlantic Slave Trade and Colonialism (under contract with Cambridge University Press).

Please join us on Thursday, February 24^th from 5:00-6:00 p.m. for Self-Fashioning and the Black Portrait Tradition. This symposium features the work of photography-based artist, Tokie Rome-Taylor, whose images of young Black children evoke African diasporic material culture. The panel will have an open conversation about Black portraiture and self-fashioning that emphasizes Tokie Rome-Taylor’s work within a larger portrait tradition. We hope that attendees will leave the discussion understanding how Rome-Taylor uniquely contributes to that tradition while pushing the genre forward with her contemporary photography.

Tokie Rome-Taylor will be in conversation with Dr. Julie McGee, Professor of Africana Studies and Art History, regarding the legacy of images and the ethics of producing and collecting Black portraits, Dr. Curtis Small, Special Collections/Rare books librarian, TK Smith, curator and UD History graduate student, and Danielle Bing, History graduate student specializing in fashion and self-representation.

A single word – “exclusion” – has provided a dominant framework for the history of Asians in America. Immigration law may have excluded Chinese migrants from the nation for more than fifty years, but those who were already in America (and those who continued to arrive) were also included within the political economy and racial regime of the U.S. West. This talk on February 22nd from 12:30-1:30 will explore the terms of that inclusion, focusing in particular on the role of civil and criminal law.

Beth Lew-Williams is Associate Professor of History at Princeton University. She is a historian of race and migration in the United States, specializing in Asian American history. With support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, her next book project will consider the policing of Chinese migrants in the American West.

During the 2021 fall semester history students in Roger Horowitz’s class interviewed 25 African Americans who lived nearby, attended, or worked at the University of Delaware between 1960 and 2000. Horowitz worked closely with UD alumna and former community resident Denise Hayman who provided the names and contacts that made the interviews possible. In this event, Horowitz will explain their approach to using oral history to develop a collaborative project between current students and the African American community. Several students and an interviewee will participate as well in this session and will share some of the stories recorded in these interviews. The University Library is processing the interviews and will make them available to the public once that is completed.

This event is part of the Equity in Action Speaker Series. Equity in Action is a year long speaker series hosted by the Community Engagement Initiative.

Please join Honors, UD ADVANCE and the UD Anti-racism Initiative as we present research findings on the experiences of women of color faculty at UD and have a community discussion on best practices in supporting faculty of color on campus. Rates of turnover for women of color faculty at UD outpace that of their white colleagues and faculty of color perceive their departmental climate as less positive than white faculty. Based on these findings, UD ADVANCE conducted in-depth interviews with 27 women of color faculty at UD to understand their lived experiences on campus and solicit their ideas for how to improve recruitment, retention, and advancement of faculty of color. After a brief presentation led by professors Yvette Jackson and Shawn Vican, we’ll open the floor to your questions, suggestions, and strategies to promote an inclusive campus climate.

Yvette Jackson Ph.D., is Professor Emerita, Organic Chemistry, of The University of the West Indies (UWI), with research interests in the synthesis and chemistry of bioactive heterocyclic compounds and their analogues. Her most recent appointment at The UWI was as Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Graduate Studies, with responsibility for graduate education across all campuses of the university. Professor Jackson joined the UD Advance Institute in September 2017.

Shawna Vican is Assistant Professor, Sociology & Criminal Justice who studies processes of organizational and institutional change, with a particular focus on the adoption and implementation of new employment practices and corporate social behaviors.  Across her research, Shawna seeks to understand how organizational practices, managerial behavior, and workplace culture shape individual career outcomes as well as broader patterns of labor market inequality.  Shawna received her Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University and was previously a Research Fellow at Catalyst Inc.

Are you interested in tackling the problems faculty and graduate students have encountered while trying to teach about race and racism in the classroom. We have received several requests from faculty for an opportunity to have frank, faculty-led conversations to help us all deal with a range of difficulties, including having trouble navigating racist language and incidents in the classroom.

The UD Anti-Racism Initiative, in conjunction with the Office of Institutional Equity, is offering a 90 minute faculty-led Difficult Conversations Workshop on Tuesday, February 1^st at noon, where we can talk freely about best practices, strategies, and responses. The workshop will be led by Emerald Christopher-Byrd, Lynnette Overby, Alison Parker, and Earl Smith.