UT Africa
Distinguished
Lecture Series
Smartphone Matters:
Black Life, Unitentiary and Android Cops
Black Lives Matter
VENUE | University of Texas
LECTURE | Dr Moyo Okediji
Overview
This lecture, by Dr Moyo Okediji, highlights the gender, racial, economic and sexual politics of recent street-level smartphone activism in the United States, under the notion of “Unitentiary and Android Cops.” Civil activists and organizations such as “Black Lives Matter” have greatly benefited from the popular use of the smartphone. But what remains hidden in global cultural blind spots, awaiting discovery beyond the technology of the smartphone? Following an autobiographical storyline linking the past to the present, the lecture weaves a narrative of images, music, and literatures spanning several centuries across trans-Atlantic experiences of Triangular trade culture.
UT Africa Distinguished Lecture Series 2013
Art, Social Struggle, and the Nation-State
VENUE: The University of Texas at Austin
CONVENERS: Toyin Falola
Overview
Dr. Thomas McClendon presents "Making African History in the U.S.: The South African Education Program in the 1980s," which focused on the struggle against apartheid that intensified in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s and its U.S. supporters. The talk was then followed by a Q&A session.
UT Africa Distinguished Lecture Series 2012
The Spirit and Practice of Jazz as Theatre
Jazz
VENUE | The University of Texas at Austin
CONVENERS | Toyin Falola
Overview
"The Spirit and Practice of Jazz as Theatre" is presented by Dr. Omi Jones. Part lecture, part performance, part audience participation, this talk examined what jazz does when imagined as theatre, and includes personal accounts, performance descriptions and an analysis of the spiritual elements that support the art form.
UT Africa Distinguished Lecture Series 2011
The Roles of Cultural Orientation
VENUE | The University of Texas at Austin
CONVENERS | Toyin Falola
Overview
This presentation by Dr Augustine Agwuele on the “’Trivial’ Linguistics of a Mental Program” examined questions such as: What role does my primary cultural orientation play in my interactions with others? As I move my physical self, what words/codes and index of signification do I move with it? When I communicate with others, what cultural norms do I reveal?
A.G. Hopkins Conference 2011
The Roles of Cultural Orientation
AG Hopkins and Empire
VENUE | The University of Texas at Austin
CONVENERS | Toyin Falola
Overview
This 2011 conference, held in honor of Professor A.G. Hopkins, featured discussions ranging from Economics and Imperial Expansion to Empire and Economic History Rethinking the British Empire, Globalization and The West, and Globalization and Decolonization. The conference closed with former students and colleagues presenting a book of essays entitled, Africa, Empire and Globalization: Essays in Honor of A. G. Hopkins, and final remarks by Prof AG Hopkins.
Dele Jẹgẹdẹ Conference
Art, Social Struggle, and the Nation-State
Dele jegede and activism
VENUE: The University of Texas at Austin
CONVENERS: Toyin Falola and Segun Obasa
Overview
This one-day conference brought together scholars and associates of dele jẹgẹdẹ who examined his work and their import for understanding Nigeria, the oil rich but embattled postcolonial African State, and other locations that jegede has had cause to interrogate in his work. The conference was structured into two phases. Phase I brought together discussions around he body of work by dele jegede’s body of work and how it represents alternative history, and in part II Contributors from diverse and allied fields engaged polemical art a la jegede as both points of departure and arrival in considering the role of
the arts in the developmental trajectory that nation states favor. The conference alslo included the book presentation of Art, Parody and Politics: dele jẹgẹdẹ’s Creative Activism, Nigeria and the transnational space.