For many years, the Department of African and African American Studies (AFR) has invited renowned scholars, thinkers, artists, and leaders to offer lectures enlightening our students and community on contemporary issues relevant to black life. Our new speaker series, Hieroglyph, honors Black Feminist literary scholar Barbara Christian and her argument that the grace, pleasure, and play of masterful and everyday black theory configure such critical speculation as a hieroglyph, “a written figure that is both sensual and abstract, both beautiful and communicative.”  As such, this series calls forward the most provocative and dynamically expressive forms of black theory – that made within academic institutions and without.

Spring 2020 Hieroglyph

What I Do Know is that It Is In Your Hands: Honoring Toni Morrison

Fall 2020 Hieroglyph

The Black Radical (Techno-)Imagination: Data and Technology as Sites of Struggle