The Department of African American Studies develops a monthly series designed to build our campus community and apply scholarship to daily practice. 

This spring, we launched In Dialogue, a new monthly series created to bring scholarship out of the classroom and into conversation with our broader campus community. Organized by the department’s Programming Committee, In Dialogue creates space for researchers, students, and community members to think together across disciplines and lived experiences.

The series opened with M.A. student Ziyen Curtis presenting “Black History Education, 1950–1959,” a research talk examining how Black history has been taught and contested during a foundational decade in American education. Next, Eduction Leadership & Policy Analysis Ph.D. student, Tony DelaRosa gave a cross-disciplinary lecture entitled: “Du Boisian Black-Asian Relationality & Radicalization: A Critical Discourse Analysis”. Drawing on W.E.B. Du Bois’s writings, DelaRosa’s work examined the histories and political solidarities between Black and Asian communities. We closed our spring programming with a research talk from M.A. student Jada Young, “Teachers’ Visions of Liberatory Learning for Incarcerated Black Girls”, a talk that centered Young’s fieldwork in Milwaukee. Every session drew on methodical research while remaining accessible, which is the kind of exchange In Dialogue was designed for.

These sessions set a precedent for what In Dialogue can be: a forum for scholarship and curiosity, where the work happening inside our department extends outward into the campus and into the community. In Dialogue will continue into the fall semester. Stay tuned for upcoming session announcements from the Programming Committee: all are welcome.