Black
Lives
matter
MAKING THE REVOLUTION IRRESISTIBLE
The Department of African American and African Studies is truly invested in how we can do higher education differently. We focus on Black feminisms, Black genders, and Black sexuality studies addressing important and often underexplored aspects of Black Studies. We work to cultivate imagination, which gives students tools to actually see, feel, and experience the world as it ought to be, as they want it to be, not how it is.
Sonic Introductions
In AAAS, we know you want an education that recognizes you as a whole person with brilliant ideas, creative vision, and a desire to remain connected to the people who support your growth. In order to achieve these goals, music helps us all to survive, thrive, inspire, move, remember, and feel. Sound and feeling music can be great sources of knowledge, motivators for study, and energies for living.
The problem is schooling often drains us of our spirit and creative energy by promoting a life of the mind detached from heart and all that our hands can make. In AAAS, we are scholars, artists, activists, and cultural workers who appreciate a good sound. That’s why we created these sonic introductions.
Here’s how it works:
Press play, listen deeply, and enjoy the music and sounds that reflect our love of self, community, and AAAS!
Ruth Nicole Brown
phd
Chairperson
Suban Nur Cooley
phd
Assistant Professor
LeConté Dill
DrPH
Associate Professor
Olivia Furman
phd
Post-Doc/Research Associate
Natasha N. Jones
phd
Associate Professor
Chamara Jewel Kwakye
phd
Assistant Professor
Sheri Lewis
phd
Assistant Professor
Yvonne Morris
phd
Academic Specialist
Gianina K.L. Strother
Assistant Professor
Renée Wilmot
phd
Assistant Professor
Audio curation and mixing by Blair E. Smith, PHD
Interested in following these sounds?
(sounds sourced)
Our AAAS Bookshelf
Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths (SOLHOT) is a space to celebrate Black girlhood in all of its complexity with Black girls and those who love and support us. In SOLHOT we dance, sing, discuss important issues, create art, and organize together to improve the communities of which we are a part. We do what needs to be done. The process of doing SOLHOT involves being together and deciding what our work will be based on the gifts, talents, and ideas of those who show up. More than anything we value Black girls’ lives and create spaces to affirm Black girl genius.
Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths (SOLHOT) is a space to celebrate Black girlhood in all of its complexity with Black girls and those who love and support us. In SOLHOT we dance, sing, discuss important issues, create art, and organize together to improve the communities of which we are a part. We do what needs to be done. The process of doing SOLHOT involves being together and deciding what our work will be based on the gifts, talents, and ideas of those who show up. More than anything we value Black girls’ lives and create spaces to affirm Black girl genius.
The mission of The Feminist Wire is to provide socio-political and cultural critique of anti-feminist, racist, and imperialist politics pervasive in all forms and spaces of private and public lives of individuals globally. Of particular critical interest to us are social and political phenomena that block, negate, or limit the satisfaction of goods or ends that humans, especially the most vulnerable, minimally require for living free of structural violence. The Feminist Wire seeks to valorize and sustain pro-feminist representations and create alternative frameworks to build a just and equitable society.
featured News
Taking Up Space as a Scholar, Activist, and Visionary Co-Builder of the New AAAS Department
Scholar, author, activist, and visionary builder, these are just a few words to describe Tamura Lomax, Foundational Associate Professor, who came to Michigan State University to work alongside Ruth Nicole Brown, Inaugural Chair.
MSU African American and African Studies Seeks ‘Technologies of Living for Survival Into Wellness’
Collectively Building Anew: the Department of African American and African Studies
As we distance ourselves to help stop the spread of a deadly virus, a new department is being built within Michigan State University’s College of Arts & Letters — the Department of African American and African Studies (AAAS).