Black History Month FHSS Research Talk

Please join us for a special Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (FHSS) Research Talks event, honouring and celebrating Black History Month.

Guest speakers, Dr. Edna Djokoto-Asem (FHSS, Athabasca University) and Dr. Joseph Kelly (FHSS, Athabasca University) will share their important research and perspectives that both highlight complex histories and nuanced philosophical contributions—from Lethbridge, Alberta to the global Black diaspora.

Presentations

Addressing the Present from the Past: An Exploratory History Study of Blacks in Lethbridge, Alberta

Presenters: Dr. Edna Djokoto-Asem, Academic Coordinator, Labour Studies, Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies, FHSS, Athabasca University, and Dr. Korbla P. Pulplampu*, Professor, Department of Sociology, MacEwan University.
*please note, Dr. Pulplampu will not be in attendance

Djokoto-Asem will share details of an exploratory study that uses archival sources to determine whether there is an interplay between immigration policy and the settlement of Blacks in Lethbridge and the surrounding areas during the first half of the 20th century. The interest is not only in studying historical immigrant experiences, but also to better understand the positionality of Black people in Lethbridge and surrounding areas at the dawn of the current millennium.

The Negritude Moment and Conceptions of Black Consciousness

Presenter: Dr. Joseph Kelly, Assistant Professor of History, Centre for Humanities, FHSS, Athabasca University

Kelly will discuss Reiland Rabaka's (2015) The Negritude Movement as an opening to a discussion on conceptions of Black consciousness. These key authors and their ideas are presented as important way points or destinations in the development of a diasporic Black subjectivity, shaping its sense of "soul"/ selfhood in a zone between aesthetics and pragmatic politics—both including and beyond the African American experience to also include contributions from the Black francophone world.