Afro Futures (Moved By) Afro Pasts (2010-2019)

AADS continued growth after 2010. Major initiatives included Black Europe, Black France Film Festival, Blacks in Country Music, Black Foodways, and Urban Education and Black Male Achievement. In 2012, the journal Palimpsest began publication. March 2015 saw the Callie House Research Center dedicated. By 2018, the program gained departmental status after nearly fifty years at Vanderbilt.

Palimpsest: A Journal of Women, Gender, and the Black International, volume 1, issue 1, 2012. Loan by Department of African American and Diaspora Studies.         

Peer-reviewed journal concerning women and gender in the African diaspora. The publication is hosted by AADS and published by State University of New York (SUNY) Press. 

[Mary Francis Berry and African American and Diaspora Studies Program Faculty]. March 12, 2015. Photo Reproduction. Loan by Steve Green.

Dedication of the Callie House Research Center with Mary Francis Berry (center front), a nationally recognized historian, Calle House scholar, and Nashville native. AADS faculty members pictured include (left to right) Houston A. Baker, Tiffany Ruby Patterson, Tracy D. Sharpley-Whiting, Alice Randall, and Gilman W. Whiting.

Alice Randall and Caroline Randall Williams. Soul Food Love: Healthy Recipes Inspired by One Hundred Years of Cooking in a Black Family. First edition. Clarkson Potter/Publishers, 2015. Southern Civilization Collection. Vanderbilt University Special Collections.                                                             

AADS faculty Alice Randall and Caroline Randall Williams (pictured on the cover), Writer-in-Residence in the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt, collaborated on Soul Food Love. They share their family history and recipes in the context of Black women’s relationship to food through cooking, foodways, and health.

Houston Baker. I Don’t Hate the South: Reflections on Faulkner, Family, and the South.  Oxford University Press, 2007. South Civilization Collection. Vanderbilt University Special Collections.

Professor Houston A. Baker joined Vanderbilt in 2006 as faculty in AADS and English. I Don’t Hate the South is part memoir, literary criticism, and history of race relations in the US South and in academic institutions.

[Black Aesthetics and Blues Geographies: A Symposium in Honor of Houston A. Baker]. March 29, 2019. Loan by Department of African American and Diaspora Studies.   

The idea of “Black Studies As (A) Movement: AADS@50” as an exhibit was born of conversations with Terrance Dean, PhD (Religious Studies) at this symposium honoring the scholarship of Professor Houston A. Baker.

[Black Panther: Blackness Through a Comic Book Lens.] February 19, 2018. Loan by Department of African American and Diaspora Studies.

The major studio film release of Black Panther and its comic book legacy gave the opportunity for AADS faculty and invited scholars to discuss its representation of Blackness and broader cultural impact.

Gilman W. Whiting. [Scholar Identity Model Concept]. Reproduction. Loan by Gilman Whiting. 

Professor Whiting conceptualized the Scholar Identity Model to help schools and communities support the academic achievement of African American and Latino male students. Urban Education and Black Male Achievement is one of five current initiatives of AADS.