The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean at the City University of New York extend a call for papers for their regular conference on the state of scholarship in African American Studies. Entitled, The State of African American Studies : Methodology, Pedagogy, and Research , the conference will take place on January 6-8, 2011 at the Schomburg Center , located at 135 th Street and Malcolm X   Boulevard in Harlem, and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, located at 365 Fifth Avenue . Complete panels and individual paper submissions related to the theme – broadly conceived – are invited from scholars and graduate students. In addition to papers in your academic areas of expertise, and on teaching and research methodologies, are particularly welcome submissions on labor, community engagement, gender, sexuality, visual culture, and relations in the disapora.

Proposals should be submitted electronically and must include your name, title of the paper, panel, or roundtable, and an abstract of 150 words.   They should also include the institutional affiliation of each presenter, phone numbers, and email addresses. Submit proposals by November 1, 2010 to: Aisha al-Adawiya, State of African American Studies, Schomburg Center For Research in Black Culture

Call for papers

The Institute of Contemporary Music Performance in London, UK will be hosting a conference on July 8^th and 9^th 2010, entitled ‘The Place and Purpose of Popular Music in higher Education’.

Popular music has a growing presence in universities and other institutions of Higher Education, yet its relevance and purpose in the sector tend to remain on the fringes of academic discussion. Popular music occupies a minority niche at many music education conferences. At popular music conferences, education is rarely mentioned. The objective of this conference is to address this imbalance by providing a platform for scholarly exchange and debate.

Papers are invited on topics relating to the conference theme. The submission process is open for spoken papers and poster presentations.

Papers may address, but are not limited to, the following subjects:

Place
The value of studying popular music
What does a popular music graduate do?
To what extent and in what ways is popular music perceived as an alternative to traditional music in Higher Education programmes?
What does popular music education look like around the world?

Purpose
What do we teach when we teach popular music?
What do students learn when they study popular music?
Curriculum and course design
What do popular music programmes expect of graduates?
The function in society of the popular music conservatoire

On April 9th and 10th the Department of African American Studies at UC Berkeley celebrates it’s 40th anniversary. The events kick off with a luncheon in the American Cultures Room (231 Wheeler Hall) at 11:45 am. Words of welcome by Executive Vice Chancellor George Breslauer are followed by a panel of students, faculty, and staff–pioneers of the Afro-American Studies program at Berkeley. From 2:30pm – 4pm, undergraduate and graduate students in African American Studies present their current research.

On that evening we are honored to collaborate with the African American Museum and Library at Oakland in hosting “40 Years of Soul.” The night is a musical and artistic celebration of the past forty years. The band “Theory & Soul” – complete with vocalists, dancers, and spoken word artists – will interpret the past 40 years.

Saturday morning begins with a continental breakfast in the American Cultures Room at 8:30am. Our keynote address will be delivered by Dr. Julianne Malveaux, President at Bennett College in the Maude Fife Room at 9:15am. Following the address, we will feature the several alumni who will reflect on how African American Studies has shaped their career paths. At 12:30pm, we will dedicate the graduate student lounge to Dr. Vévé Clark in 683 Barrows Hall. The event closes with a lunch and departmental open house until 2pm.

Friday April 9
11:45–1:00
Welcome Lunch
231 Wheeler Hall

1:00–2:15
315 Wheeler Hall (Maude Fife Room)
Greetings by EVC & Provost George Breslauer

Pioneer Panel
Hardy Frye- Chair, professor emeritus
Margaret Wilkerson, professor emeritus
Bill Banks, professor emeritus
James Noel, former student
Fran Carter, former staff

2:30–4:00
Student Research Panel
J Finley- Chair, graduate student
Christiana Milton, undergraduate student
Brandi Howard, undergraduate student
Obiamaka Ude, undergraduate student
Shaun Ossei-Owusu, graduate student
Asia Leeds, graduate student

7:00–9:00
“40 Years of Soul”
African American Museum &Library Library (Oakland)
Reception and Cultural Event

Saturday April 10
8:30–9:00
Continental Breakfast

9:15–10:30
315 Wheeler Hall
Keynote Address
Dr. Julianne Malveaux
President, Bennett College

10:45–12:15
Alumni Panel
Brandi Catanese- Chair; Associate Professor, UC Berkeley
Jennifer Madden; President, California Assoc. of Black Lawyers
Robeson Taj Frazier; Assistant Professor, USC
Quamé Patton; Interdisciplinary Prog. Coordinator, SLC UCB
Rosalind McGary, Fine Artist

12:30–2:00
Dedication/Open House
683/652 Barrows Hall
Lisa Zé Winters; Assistant Professor, Wayne State
Amy Ifatolu Gardner; MD, MPH

Winter Music Conference
March 23 – 27, 2010
Miami Beach, FL

Winter Music Conference celebrates it’s 25th year as one of the most anticipated and publicized global gatherings for pioneering artists, innovators and professionals at the bold new Eden Roc Beach Resort & Spa on Miami Beach, March 23 – 27, 2010.

Long regarded as an essential proving ground for new releases, artists and technological advances, WMC 2009 attracted over 70,000 event attendees, 503 accredited journalists and 3,228 industry delegates from 62 countries who participated in 52 industry panels, seminars and workshops as well as 1,910 artists and DJs who performed at a total of 506 events presented at 127 venues across 6 days in Miami Beach and Miami.

WMC’s 25th anniversary industry program will convene at the Eden Roc resort which has just undergone a multi-year $200 million renovation. “It’s a perfect fit for what we are doing” says WMC Co-founder, Louis Possenti, “The lobby bar has a great ambience for networking and the timing is just right with an impressive renovation. The rooms are some of the nicest I’ve seen on the beach.” Special Convention Rates start at $219 per night.

Highlights of the 2010 program will include the IDMAs (International Dance Music Awards), also in its 25th consecutive year, where the music business converges to honor exceptional achievements of industry, artists and innovators in more than 50 categories. The IDMAs is one of the only longstanding industry events of its stature where the fans decide – generating over a million votes from music fans in 183 countries last year. The online ballot will be posted in November.

WMC will also present the 3rd edition of South Beach Sessions, a bold new perspective on the traditional WMC panel program. Founded on the principles that make music compelling – individual expression, empowerment, creative thinking and collaboration – the program’s mission is to create greater exposure for artists and ideas. Pioneers in music, art, fashion, technology, business, education, the environment participate in one of the most inspiring and epic programs of the week. SBS has featured some of the industry’s most pioneering champions of positive change from Richie Hawtin to Public Enemy’s Chuck D and Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am.

WMC 2010 will host the 4th edition of the Record Collector’s Show – an international hub for buyers, sellers and traders of rare and collectible vinyl, tapes, and music memorabilia which assembles the best record dealers and features some of the rarest music in the world.

The WMC badge also includes entry to the 12th Annual Ultra Music Festival, the largest event of its kind in the US.  Currently the WMC industry badge is being offered at a promotional Early Registration rate of $235 until November 11th, which includes access to all official WMC events across the conference dates. Marketing opportunities are currently discounted by 40% through December 18, 2009. Don’t miss out on a legendary Winter Music Conference in Miami Beach.

WMC is presented with the support of the Miami Beach Visitor and Convention Authority.

WMC Office:
3450 NE 12th Terrace
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33334
Phone: (954) 563-4444 * Fax (954) 563-1599
Email: info@wintermusicconference.com
WinterMusicConference.com

The study of black internationalism examines the critical historical engagement of black thinkers and actors with global politics, and the often international channels through which such engagements have taken place. Scholarship has explored how black internationalism has functioned through movements as diverse as pan-Africanism, Négritude, Communism, Surrealism, Liberalism and differing religious movements, to name only some examples (Patterson and Kelley, 2000). We can thus conceptualise multiple black internationalisms, articulated in diverse historical and geographical settings (West, Martin and Wilkins, 2009). Particular attention has been given both to the constructed nature of racial communities and identities within black internationalism, and also the gendered and class-stratified nature such constructions have taken (Edwards, 2003; Stephens: 2005). Such work has opened a space for debate over the meanings of both ‘blackness’ and ‘internationalism’ within global cultures and politics.

The study of black internationalism offers considerable opportunities for geographers working on the spatialities of anticolonialism, political activism, the (historical) geographies of social movements, and the relationship between space and politics. However, at present it remains the terrain primarily of historians and literary critics. Indeed, debates around political geography and nationalism have been accused of remaining ‘woefully ignorant of … African diasporic movements’ (Tyner, 2004: 343). This session will explore the historical and political geographies of these movements in order to think more deeply about the relationship between space and the heterogeneous politics of black internationalism. Topics for discussion might include, but are not restricted to, the following:

·         The ‘imaginative geographies’ of black internationalism;
·         Black internationalism and the spaces of print or public culture;
·         Place-based articulations of black internationalism;
·         The relationship between black internationalism and other political or cultural movements;
·         The gendering of black internationalist discourse and practice;
·         Geographical conceptualisations and contestations of ‘black’ and/or ‘internationalism’;
·         Black internationalism’s historical geographies;
·         Spatialities of black internationalism today;
·         Methodological reflections on researching black internationalisms.

Proposed papers, in the form of an abstract (max. 250 words), should be submitted to Daniel Whittall at d.j.whittall at rhul.ac.uk by Friday 12 February 2010.

The Pain of Listening
Using Music as a Weapon at
Guantanamo

Spiegel Online (Germany)
January 15, 2010

By Tobias Rapp

For years, US interrogators at Guantanamo used
painfully loud music on prisoners at Camp Delta. Rock
musicians like Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine
and civil rights organization are demanding an
investigation into the practice.

In May 2003, a military policeman came to Ruhal Ahmed’s
cell in Camp Delta at the military prison in Guantanamo
and took him to an interrogation room. There, he was
forced to squat while the M.P. tied his leg irons to a
ring set in the floor. Then his hands were placed
behind his back so that his handcuffs could also be
attached to the floor ring. In this “stress position,”
the prisoner is unable to sit, stand or kneel, and can
only crouch in an intermediate position that quickly
causes cramping. Ahmed was familiar with this
treatment, which was part of the “standard operating
procedure” used to prepare prisoners for interrogation.

Ahmed had been in Guantanamo for more than a year. For
weeks, the interrogators had been asking him the same
question, again and again: What were he and two of his
friends, who were captured with him, doing in
Afghanistan in the fall of 2001? All three men are
British Muslims. Ahmed’s family originally immigrated
to Great Britain from what is now Bangladesh. The men
were referred to as the “Tipton Three,” a reference to
the small city in the British Midlands where they were
from. On this particular day, there was also a boom box
in the small, eight-square-meter (86-square-foot)
interrogation cell. The soldier inserted a CD by rapper
Eminem, turned up the volume and left.

“I thought: What’s going on now? Did he forget his boom
box?” says Ahmed. “When he returned, I asked him:
‘What’s this about? Why are you playing Eminem?’ He
looked at me and said nothing.”

The next time Ahmed was taken to the interrogation
cell, the music was heavy metal instead of Eminem. The
volume was earsplitting and the music was played for
hours, even entire days. Sometimes they also stuck a
stroboscope in front of his face. The cell was dark and
he could see nothing but the flashing lights in his
eyes. The interrogators also turned down the
temperature on the air-conditioning, forcing Ahmed to
endure hours of the music and flashing lights in an
ice-cold room. He wasn’t permitted to use the bathroom
and was left to urinate or defecate in his pants. The
shackles caused his legs to swell up while the
deafening music continued incessantly.

Continue here…

Editors
Bianca C. Williams (University of Colorado-Boulder
Jennifer A. Woodruff (Bates College)

Abstract Proposals due January 15, 2010

The editors seeks contributions for a collection that explores „feeling
and „emotion as rubrics for understanding the complexities of Black
American race, gender, and sexuality. By framing an examination of the
Black American experience through „feeling, this volume aims to call
attention to the ways research informants negotiate their identities and
navigate the affective dimensions of power within their communities. The
volume will provide texture to the literature on race, sexuality, and
gender in the U.S., focusing on how Black Americans /feel/ as they
experience their racialized, gendered, and sexualized identities, and
how they connect with other individuals (including the researcher)
through similar and/or divergent emotional experiences.

Please send a 350-500 word abstract and CV to jwoodruf at bates.edu
and Bianca.williams at colorado.edu by January 15, 2010. Notification
of accepted proposals will be made by March 1, 2010. First chapter
drafts of 6000-7000 words will be due around June 2010. More information
on the collection‚s theme is included below:

In a public dialogue held at the University of Pennsylvania
anthropologist John L. Jackson and English professor Frederick C. Moten
put forth the proverbial question, „Do you feel me? in order to draw
attention to the tensions and disconnects people feel as they build
relationships within the African Diaspora. Moten argued that the
question should be read as both „a translation and an articulation,
suggesting that the query itself claims, „you get it, but you don‚t
understand. This volume takes up Jackson‚s and Moten‚s inquiry about
„feeling‰ and its link to differentials of power, in order to use
„affect‰ and „emotion‰ as rubrics for thinking through the ways people
experience racialized, gendered, and sexualized processes differently,
and position themselves within these discourses. While recognizing the
significant contributions theorists of intersectionality have made to
the analysis of power and subject formation, we propose „feeling‰ as a
productive analytic tool for examining how race, gender, and sexuality
not only intersect, but are always inextricably linked. Instead of
studying large structures or institutions, we aim to place an
anthropological emphasis on /people/ as mediators of racialized,
gendered, and sexualized experiences in local and transnational spaces,
and discuss how these individuals /feel/ as they participate in, and
work against, racist, sexist, and homophobic discourses.

Additionally, we seek to explore how subjects may use affect and emotion
to speak to those differences of power embedded within the relationship
between informant and research ethnographer. In those critical moments
when informants implicitly or explicitly ask the ethnographer, „Do you
feel me?,‰ they are often gesturing towards an embrace of the
ethnographer‚s racialized, gendered, and sexualized credentials (yes,
you are one of us), or a disavowal (you may study me, you may feel me,
but you will never fully understand me). This collection explores how
feeling and emotion contribute to the ever-changing racialized,
gendered, and sexualized contours of the Black American experience(s) by
asking the complex question „Do you feel me?

Bianca C. Williams
Assistant Professor
Ethnic Studies
University of Colorado at Boulder
339 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0339

in other news, the informative muema of bounce.fm and vocalist hero dekmusic of slaag records at deephousepage report that the vibrant michelle weeks is the vocalist for the new kentucky fried chicken jingle “fire.’ look and listen here. speaking of which, i finally found a very easily way to get my archived photos into flash slides and this is one features divas michelle weeks and the late sabrynaah pope at adam cruz’ mixtape sessions held at the old halcyon store in brooklyn. i think later on that evening myself, jon martin of king street sounds and friends enjoyed the fierce ultra nate perform in manhattan back in 2003. sigh…i miss nyc.

love, tamtam

merry christmas and happy holidays!  well, it’s not really a mixtape just some garland made out of old cassette tapes. i was tickled when i saw this in a local eating joint here in berkeley. cute. but here’s a sweet mix from one of the coolest dj cats around. it’s the lovely mr. joey negro. long, nice and heavy on the vocal tip but toughened up with some glitchy tech house trax along the way. listen to the mix here: joey negro christmas mix.

help a fellow grad student in california out. good luck, jennifer!
best, princess tamtam

To Whom It May Concern:

I am a doctoral candidate at Alliant International University, San
Diego. For my dissertation, I am examining gender perceptions among
people with various sexual/gender orientations.

The research study was developed in consultation with my dissertation
committee, LGBT individuals, and was approved by the institutional
review board (IRB) at Alliant International University.

I hope that this study will contribute to further understanding of
the understudied and underserved population. I also believe the
knowledge gained from this study will help therapists in addressing
issues related to sexual and gender orientation.

I am looking for CA residents (18+ years old) to complete an
anonymous online questionnaire, available at: www.genderstudy.info
(instead of .org or .com). More specifically, I am recruiting (a)
heterosexual individuals, (b) parents of heterosexual individuals,
and (c) parents of transgendered individuals.

I would appreciate if you could circulate this information among your
students and faculty. Additionally, I would be happy to provide more
information or fliers upon request.

Thank you,

Jennifer Mato, M.A., LMFT
Marital and Family Therapy Doctoral Candidate
Alliant International University (San Diego)
jmato at alliant dot edu
Dissertation chair: Narumi Taniguchi, Ph.D.