Africana Research Cluster (ARC)

Africana Research Cluster (ARC)

Faculty Chair: Oneka LaBennett

Graduate Student Organizers: Adrienne Adams, Jaden Morales, & Neud’s Saint-Cyr

BACKGROUND

The Africana Research Cluster (ARC) is a student-driven intellectual community that seeks to invite scholars, artists, and community activists based on our shared interests, host social gatherings, and foster connections with faculty. It will promote national, regional, and global inquiries simultaneously about the Black Diaspora at large. As such, ARC is committed to offering opportunities to engage with contemporary and cutting-edge approaches to Black Studies–including aesthetic, geographic, historical, political, and theoretical.

Our multi-sited, multilingual programming and research broaches topics including, but not limited to:

❖    Black Feminist, Queer, & Trans Genealogies

❖    Racial Geographies / Migration / Mobility

❖    Popular Culture & The Senses (Sonic, Gastronomic, Print Culture)

❖    Empire & Racial Capitalism

❖    Logics of Black sex/gender

❖    Black Ecologies & The Anthropocene

❖    The Black Pacific & Atlantic

❖    Representation (Overrepresentation, Re-presentation, Misrepresentation, Nonrepresentation)

❖    Black Intellectual Theory & History

ARC’s faculty network includes:

Natalie Belisle (Spanish), Fiori Berhane (Anthropology), Ben Carrington (Communication), Corrine Collins (English), Melissa Daniels-Rauterkus (English), Joan Flores-Villalobos (History), Taj Frazier (Communication), Jonathan Gomez (Music), Reighan Gillam (Anthropology), Edwin Hill (French & ASE), Zakiyyah Iman Jackson (English & GSS), Kara Keeling (ASE & Cinema), Oneka LaBennett (ASE & GSS), Ronald Mendoza-De Jesús (Spanish), Lydie Moudileno (ASE & French), Edgardo Perez-Morales (History), AE Stevenson (Gender & Sexuality Studies), Francille Wilson (ASE, History, & GSS), and Mlondi Zondi (CSLC/COLT).

To be affiliated with ARC, inquire about matters pertaining to the cluster, or submit a request for the Cluster to circulate information about events/grants/programs/etc, email asearc@usc.edu

To stay up to date with ARC’s programming,
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Spring 2021 ARC EVENTS

February 4, 2021

Black Gay Mail:  Alan Bell, Ajamu X, and Gd Victorianne on Transnational Postal Connections in the 1980s and 1990s

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BACKGROUND

The Africana Research Cluster (ARC) brings together faculty and students in ASE and across the university. Formerly the African American and African Diaspora Research Cluster,it aims to facilitate discussions around the arts, cultures, and histories connected to Africa. This cluster fosters a critical yet open definition of Africana studies. It will promote national, regional, and global inquiries simultaneously about the African continent and other geographical regions, including the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Pacific. As such, ARC is committed to offering opportunities to investigate a broad spectrum of relationships to « Africa », (from « real » to imagined and speculative) while encouraging unexpected sites of research, approaches, and definitions of the field.

The varied interests and expertise of our ASE faculty constitute a rich (and nonrestrictive) framework in which to engage in multisited, multilingual and interdisciplinary studies in Africana. These include:

–                  African-American studies

–                  African studies

–                  Migration and Diasporas

–                  Afrodescendant people around the world

–                  Caribbean studies

–                  Black Europe

–                  Music, arts and literature

–                  Intellectual and political history

–                  Critical race theory

–                  Postcolonial and decolonial thought

–                  Popular culture

–                 Digital, Public, and Spatial Humanities

–                  Blackness and/in the Global South

–                  Gender and sexuality studies

In addition to an already strong cohort of Africana scholars, recent recruitment in ASE and across the campus has substantially enhanced our coverage and faculty presence. These include:

Natalie Belisle (Spanish), Melissa Daniels-Rauterkus (English), Joan Flores-Villalobos (History), Taj Frazier (Communication), Reighan Gillam (Anthropology), Edwin Hill (French & ASE), Zakiyyah Jackson (English), Oneka LaBennett (ASE), Ronald Mendoza-De Jesus (Spanish), Lydie Moudileno (French and ASE), Edgardo Perez-Moralez (History), Francille Wilson (ASE).

To be affiliated with ARC, inquire about matters pertaining to the cluster, or submit a request for the Cluster to circulate information about events/grants/programs/etc, email asearc@usc.edu

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Past 2020-21 ARC Events

October 21, 2020

First Installment of the “Blackness Across Borders” series
Black and Brown Coalitional Politics: Decolonizing the Curriculum and the Democratic Commons in the Age of COVID-19 with Lázaro Lima (Hunter College) and Joan Flores-Villalobos (USC)

September 29, 2020
Decolonial Feminisms and French Coloniality with Françoise Vergès
Apart of Dr. Lydie E. Moudileno’s Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture 603 seminar series examining Frantz Fanon

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2019-20 ARC EVENTS

(under the leadership of Aurelien Davennes and Dr. Moudileno)

OCTOBER 4th, 2019

Official launch event with graduate students and faculty members from different departments.

NOVEMBER 2019-APRIL 2020

Monthly ARC meetings with graduate students from different departments (American Studies and Ethnicity, Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture, Communications, Sociology, etc.) discussing their research, interests, and approaches to the African Diaspora and Africana studies.