Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, has announced the 2019-2020 class of fellows.
“We are happy to welcome one of our most distinguished and exciting cohorts of W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute Fellows,” says Gates. “We look forward to an extraordinary range of artistic and scholarly work next academic year. Afro-Asian solidarity, the erotics of race, Indo-Caribbean identity in New York City, witchcraft and law in the British Empire, a contemporary chamber opera inspired by secret gatherings of enslaved African Americans, bioethics and African philosophy, and climate change and security threat in the West African Sahel are among the exciting projects which the 2019-2020 Class of Fellows will be pursuing at the W. E. B Du Bois Research Institute, housed in the Hutchins Center.”
The seventeen 2019-2020 W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute Fellows and their projects are as follows:
• Sinclair Bell is Associate Professor of Art History at Northern Illinois University. In residence as a Cohen Fellow for the 2019-2020 academic year, Bell will be at work on Race and Representation in the Roman Empire: Black Africans in Imperial Visual Culture.
• David Bindman is Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at University College London. In residence as an Image of the Black Archive & Library Fellow for the 2019-2020 academic year, Bindman will be at work on the volumes The Image of the Black in Latin America and the Caribbean and The Image of the European in African Art.
• Keisha Blain is Associate Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. In residence as a Hutchins Fellow for Spring 2020, Blain will be at work on “East Unites with West": Black Women, Japan, and Visions of Afro-Asian Solidarity
• Danielle Boaz is Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at the University of North Carolina. In residence as a Stuart Hall fellow for the 2019-2020 academic year, Boaz will be at work on Witchcraft, Obeah, and Vagrancy: Spiritual Practice and Colonial Law in Britain’s Atlantic Empire, 1830s-1960s.
• Jorge Felipe is an Independent Scholar. In residence as a Hutchins Fellow for the 2019-2020 academic year, Felipe will be at work on The People of the Atlantic Slave Trade.
• Martine Jean is an Independent Scholar. In residence as a Mamolen Fellow for the 2019-2020 academic year, Jean will be at work on Routine Imprisonment: Race and Citizenship in Nineteenth-Century Brazil, 1830-1890.
• Aaron Johnson is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh. In residence as a Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow for the 2019-2020 academic year, Johnson will be at work on Jazz Radio America: Commercial to Noncommerical, 1950 to Present.
• Rumbi Katedza is an Independent Filmmaker. In residence as the Manyika Fellow for Fall 2019, Katedza will be at work on Filming Zimbabwe.
• Bakari Kitwana is an Independent Artist and Scholar. In residence as a Nas Fellow for the 2019-2020 academic year, Bakari will be at work on The Hip-Hop and Presidential Elections Digital Archive.
• Brittany Meche is a Doctoral Candidate in Geography at the University of California, Berkeley. In residence as a Stuart Hall Fellow for the 2019-2020 academic year, Meche will be at work on Securing the Sahel: Nature, Catastrophe, and the Empire of Expertise.
• George Meiu is Associate Professor of Anthropology and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. In residence as a Hutchins Fellow for Spring 2020, Meiu will be at work on Queer Objects of Rescue: Intimacy and Citizenship in an African Nation.
• Mireille Miller-Young is Associate Professor of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In residence as an Advancing Equity Through Research Fellow for the 2019-2020 academic year, Miller-Young will be at work on Ho: Hustling, Hypersexuality, and the Erotics of Race.
• Traci Parker is Assistant Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In residence as a Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow for the 2019-2020 academic year, Parker will be at work on Beyond Loving: Sex, Love, and Marriage in the Black Freedom Movement.
• Stacey Robinson is Assistant Professor of Graphic Design, School of Art and Design, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In residence as a Nas Fellow for the 2019-2020 academic year, Robinson will be at work on Sankofatopia: Creating Black Utopia through Hip-Hop, Sankofa, and Black Speculative Art.
• Anjanette Chan Tack is a Doctoral Candidate in Sociology at the University of Chicago. In residence as a Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow for the 2019-2020 academic year, Tack will be a work on “Black,” Brown,” or “Asian”?: How Indo-Caribbeans Negotiate Identity in New York City.
• Mbih J. Tosam is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bamenda, Cameroon. In residence as a Safra-Hutchins Fellow for the 2019-2020 academic year, Tosam will be at work on Bioethics and African Philosophy and Traditional Medicine.
• Imani Uzuri is an Independent Composer, Vocalist, and Scholar. In residence as a Hutchins Fellow for the 2019-2020 academic year, Uzuri will be at work on a contemporary chamber opera Hush Arbor.