Assistant Professor of Africana Studies Nigel Westmaas has been appointed to the editorial board of a new peer reviewed journal. The Journal of Race and Global Social Change (JRGSC) is “committed to the study of race, its social construction, and resistance within the global context.”

Chief Diversity Officer and Professor of Africana Studies Donald Carter and Associate Professor of Africana Studies Heather Merrill co-authored the foreword to Geographies of Privilege (Routledge, 2013), edited by France Winddance Twine and Bradley Gardener.

Angel David Nieves, associate professor of Africana studies and co-director of the Digital Humanities Initiative, gave the opening keynote address on Feb. 19 at Austin College’s Digital Humanities Colloquium.

The Associated Press quoted Assistant Professor of Africana Studies Nigel Westmaas in an article titled “Guyana Officials stay nearly twenty years in mandates.” Westmaas discussed the country’s failure to hold municipal elections for nearly 20 years. Published on March 1, the article appeared in many news outlets including The Washington Post.

An article by Associate Professor of Africana Studies and human geographer Heather Merrill, “Who Gets to Be Italian? Black Life Worlds and White Spatial Imaginaries,” is published in the book Geographies of Privilege, edited by France Winddance Twine and Bradley Gardener, Routledge, 2013.

Assistant Professor of Africana Studies Nigel Westmaas was an invited guest on Radio Free Georgia 89.3 on Feb. 9 to discuss Carnival in the Caribbean and the Americas.  Westmaas shared his knowledge and experience of the regional and global Pre-Lenten Carnival celebration and its historical, religious and cultural roots with the panel.

An article by Chief Diversity Officer and Professor of Africana Studies Donald Carter appears in African Migrations: Patterns and Perspectives.

An article by Chief Diversity Officer and Professor of Africana Studies Donald Carter was published as a chapter in Africa in Europe: Studies in Transnational Practice in the Long Twentieth Century. “Blackness Over Europe: Meditations on Culture and Belonging” appears in a section titled “Post-colonial Belonging.”

Professor of Africana Studies Vincent Odamtten presented two papers at the African Studies Association meeting in Philadelphia in November. The first paper, “Men at the Table: Ama Ata Aidoo’s Feminist Invitation” was part of a roundtable, “The Literary Artist as Public Intellectual: The Example of Ama Ata Aidoo.”

Professor of Africana Studies and Chief Diversity Officer Donald Carter and Associate Professor of Africana Studies Heather Merrill participated in the conference “Race, Ethnicity, and Place” in San Juan, Puerto Rico, during the week of Oct. 22.