Directory

Mtali Banda grew up between Madison, WI and Atlanta Georgia. He received his B.A. in Afro-American Studies from UMass Amherst. He is interested in how black music has been used to share marginalized narratives and to help develop needed conversations. A musician himself, Mtali is on the literature and culture track.

Elise Barnett is from Nassau, Bahamas and received her BA in English from the University of the Bahamas. Her research interests, which include critical race studies, gender studies, and theories of diaspora and decolonization, are informed by an interest in exploring the ways Afro-Caribbean women respond to traumas caused by colonialism and neocolonialism in their everyday praxis.

Dominick Braswell is from Brooklyn, New York. He is a community organizer who works predominantly in poor/working-class black & brown neighborhoods. Dominick received his B.A. in Africana Studies with a minor in American Studies from Brooklyn College at the City University of New York. His research focuses on public housing and the ways that despite a body of scholarship deeply critical of welfare reform (and the attacks on the social safety net), these scholars have overlooked the attack on public housing. Dominick's broader research interests include 20th Century Afro-American history, Black

Andrew Brooks grew up in Flint, Michigan and Long Beach, California. He received an undergraduate education at San Francisco State University, as well as earning graduate degrees from SFSU and the State University of New York at Albany. In addition, Andrew is the co-founder and current head editor of Living in Languages Translation Journal. His research interests revolve around the essay form through the long 20th century within African American literature and film traditions, focusing on the shift to the Black arts and power movement of the 1960s through to the greater public presence of

Anaëlle Cama was born and raised in Mulhouse, France. She underwent a two-year intensive program to prepare for the ENS (Ecole Normale Supérieure, or Superior Normal School in English) and finished the last year of a bachelor’s degree in English Studies at Jean Moulin Université in Lyon, France. She pursued a Master’s degree in Anglophone History at Université Paris Cité, during which she spent her second year at UMass as an international exchange student. Her research aims to be interdisciplinary as she equally tackles black nationalist politics, gender studies, and visual art history. As far

Ariana Collazo is from Chicago, Illinois. She received her B.A. in African and Black Diaspora Studies with a minor in Philosophy from DePaul University. Her research interests include Black Political Thought, Postcolonialism, Black Scandinavian culture and the concept of race in Scandinavia.

Dr. Covington-Ward is the Department Chair and Professor of the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies.  She served as the Department Chair in Africana Studies at the University of Pittsburgh with a secondary appointment in Anthropology. She is currently President of the Association for Africanist Anthropology, Vice-President of the Liberian Studies Association, and is an executive board member of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD).  Professor Covington-Ward received her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Cultural Anthropology from the University of

Jordón Crawford is a current PhD student of Afro-American Studies (History and Politics) from Portmore, Jamaica. His main areas of research include Caribbean Studies, Race and the Law, Black Philosophy, and Black Queer and Feminist Theory. Jordón was a 2017 Davis Scholar at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA where he earned a double bachelor with honours in Politics and Race and Ethnic Studies. During his undergraduate studies, he was awarded the 2020 Perry Research Grant to conduct research with Prof. Zahi Zalloua on Posthumanist Studies and Black Ontologies. He received the best thesis award

Maya Cunningham is an ethnomusicologist, cultural activist and jazz vocalist. She has an MA in ethnomusicology from the University of Maryland, College Park. She also holds a BMus. in jazz studies from Howard University and a MA in jazz performance from Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. Her research interests are in African-American and Southern African traditional music and identity, jazz, culturally responsive music education and applied ethnomusicology. In 2017 she received a Fulbright fellowship to study traditional music and national identity in Botswana and has presented

Dr. Markeysha Davis is a proud alumna of the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies (MA 2011, PhD 2016). While a student at the University, she worked with various student advocacy groups, including the Graduate Student Senate and Student Bridges. Currently, she serves as Academy Dean for Hartford Youth Scholars (HYS), an organization committed to getting students in Hartford, CT to and through college.

Priorly, Dr. Davis worked at the University of Hartford as an assistant professor of Literature and Africana Studies and chair of the University’s Africana Studies minor program