Anthropology and #Blacklivesmatter 11/1

You are invited to the Anthropology department’s panel discussion on Anthropology and #BlackLivesMatter on Tuesday, 11/1! It will be a fantastic event, featuring Black feminist anthropologists Dawn-Elissa Fischer, Bianca Williams, and Wesleyan’s very own Gina Athena Ulysse in a wide-ranging conversation about research, #blacklivesmatter, activism, and decolonizing anthropology.

Tuesday, November 1
4:30-6:00pm, reception to follow
Beckham Hall
facebook event page

Poster 1 Prof U

Bianca C. Williams (Ethnic Studies and Anthropology, University of Colorado at Boulder) researches theories of race and gender within African diasporic communities, particularly the emotional aspects of being “Black” and a “woman” in the U.S. and Jamaica. She is at work finishing an ethnography, The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Women and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism (under contract with Duke University Press) and an edited volume titled, “’Do You Feel Me?’: Exploring Black American Gender and Sexuality through Feeling and Emotion,” co-authored with Jennifer A. Woodruff. Essays in Transforming Anthropology and Cultural Anthropology explore questions of race and gender in ethnographic research and pedagogical practices. She has also edited two collections of essays on #BlackLivesMatter, one for Cultural Anthropology and one for Savage Minds. She is a member of Black Lives Matter 5280 and the AAA Working Group on Racialized Police Brutality and Extrajudicial Violence.

Dawn-Elissa Fischer  (Africana Studies, San Francisco State University), also known as the “DEF Professor,” is completing two manuscripts: Blackness, Race and Gender Politics in Japanese Hiphop and Methods to Floss, Theories to Flow: Hiphop Research, Aesthetics and Activism. Her work has been published in Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century, the Journal of Popular Music Studies, Transforming Anthropology, FIRE!!! The Multimedia Journal of Black Studies and The Western Journal of Black Studies. Dr. Fischer has co-produced a short film, Nihon Style, with Bianca White, which documents an annual Hiphop festival and its related organizations in Japan.  Dr. Fischer has participated with numerous international social justice creative arts endeavors, including, but not limited to Hiphop as a transnational social movement. She co-directs the BAHHRS (the Bay Area Hip Hop Research and Scholarship) project with Dave “Davey D” Cook and she is a founding staff member of Dr. Marcyliena Morgan’s Hiphop Archive as well as a co-founder of the National Hip Hop Political Convention.

Gina Athena Ulysse (Anthropology, Wesleyan University). In 2015, Prof. U received Wesleyan’s Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching and the Haitian Studies Association award for Excellence in Scholarship.  A public anthropologist and performance artist, Ulysse’s research integrates her interests in Black diasporic conditions, ethnography, pedadogy, performance and representation. More specifically, her interdisciplinary work explores the continuous impact of history on agency and possibilities of social justice in the present. Her publications include Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post Quake Chronicle (2015) and Downtown Ladies: Informal Commercial Importing, A Haitian Anthropologist and Self-Making in Jamaica (2007), and Because When God is too Busy:Haiti, me & THE WORLD (2016) as well as numerous articles and book chapters. Her performance projects include VooDooDoll, What if Haiti Were a Woman? and Contemplating Absences and Distances. Ulysse guest edited “Caribbean Rasanblaj” (2015) a double issue of e-misférica journal and “Pawol Fanm sou Douz Janvye” (2011) in Meridians journal. An intermittent blogger, she often muses on AfricaIsACountry, Huffington Post, Ms Blog and Tikkun Daily.