Black History Month 2019
The Black Experience in America
A Liberal Studies series curated by Professor Kaia Niambi Shivers
Liberal Studies presents its inaugural Black History Month series, “The Black Experience in America.”
The four-part series works to engage NYU and its surrounding communities in dialogues centering how Black people navigate, dialogue and make sense of their daily lives in the United States. The gatherings host authors, scholars, activists and artists to discuss their work in unfolding and understanding the complexities of identity in the age of globalization.
Co-sponsored by Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute; Black Student Union NYU; Center for Multicultural Education and Programs; Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora; Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law; Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures; The Latinx Project; Liberal Studies Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee; Liberal Studies Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Student Advisory Board; and Starbucks
Free and open to the public.
DAYO ADIATU is a Nigerian-American small business owner and writer who is passionate about creating diverse communities of female entrepreneurs. She uses her multifaceted experience in management, business development, and marketing to head a Digital Marketing Agency called LeadGen180. In addition to LeadGen180, Dayo leads an online accountability group for women entrepreneurs and creatives dubbed Grind Groups. She graduates with her MBA from Rutgers University, May 2019.
RENIQUA ALLEN, M.A. is a journalist that produces and writes for various outlets on issues of race, opportunity, politics and popular culture. She is currently an Eisner fellow at the Nation Institute and a producer at Fork Films. Her first book, It Was All A Dream: How A New Generation is Navigating the Broken Promise of America, about black millennials and upward mobility will be out in January 2019 from Nation Books/Hachette.
SHERIL ANTONIO, Ph.D. is an Associate Arts Professor in the Department of Arts Politics at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts where she also serves as Associate Dean. Dr. Antonio is a film lecturer, scholar, and author whose book and essays have been published by Peter Lang, Indiana University Press, the British Film Institute’s Sight & Sound, Black Camera, Silver Birch Press, and Bertz Verlang. She has worked closely with community organizations and institutions such as the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, NAACP, The Museum of the Moving Image, Ghetto Film School, and the U.S. State Department. She has served a judge for Panasonic Kid Witness News and has written for 
JILLIAN BÁEZ, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Media Culture at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. Báez specializes in Latinx media, audience studies, and transnational feminisms. She is the author of In Search of Belonging: Latinas, Media, and Citizenship (University of Illinois Press, 2018). Báez is also the co-editor of WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly. She earned her doctorate at the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her bachelor’s degree from Hunter College-CUNY in Media Studies and Black & Puerto Rican Studies.
LEO DOUGLAS, Ph.D. is a Clinical Assistant Professor at Liberal Studies. He received his Ph.D., a Masters of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology, and an Advanced Environmental Policy Certificate from Columbia University. He also holds a Masters of Philosophy degree in Zoology from the University of the West Indies, Jamaica. He is the immediate past-president of BirdsCaribbean, the largest single international NGO focusing on the conservation flora and fauna within the greater Caribbean region. He is a former board member of the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB). His previous professional experiences include work as the Executive Director of BirdLife Jamaica, and a manager for the United States Agency for International Development's (USAID-Jamaica) Ridge to Reef Sustainable Watersheds Project for four years. He describes his work as “Nature and Society Geography” as it lies with the complex nexus of human-environment relations within space, place, biodiversity conservation and social identities. His current research interests explore the importance of identity in environmental conservation education programs. He also leading a long-term visual art project that sees to illuminate the identities black Caribbean biologists, and, by so doing confront their under-representation and the marginalization of Afro-Caribbean biologists more broadly.
IFEONA FULANI, Ph.D. is a Clinical Professor in Global Liberal Studies at New York University. Her research interests are Caribbean Literary and Cultural Studies, literatures of Africa and its diasporas, Transnational Feminisms and Writing. Her scholarly publications include an edited volume of essays titled Archipelagos of sound: Transnational Caribbeanities, Women and Music (University of West Indies Press, 2012), as well as articles and reviews, most recently in Atlantic Studies and Caribbean Quarterly. She has also published a novel titled Seasons of Dust (Harlem River Press, 1997) and a collection of short stories titled Ten Days in Jamaica (Peepal Tree Press, 2012). She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, both from New York University.
WILL GUZMÁN, Ph.D. is Director of the Dr. Lee F. Hagan Africana Studies Center and Associate Professor in the African and African American Studies program at New Jersey City University. His next book project, Consigliere to Black Power (under contract, Fordham University Press), will be on the biography of prominent civil rights and criminal defense attorney Raymond A. Brown.
FAREED HAYAT, J.D. was the co-director of Criminal Justice Clinic at Howard University School of Law before joining the CUNY Law faculty as an Assistant Professor in 2018. Under his direction, students studied trial skills, substantive and procedural criminal law, drafted motions in misdemeanor and felony cases, conducted misdemeanor judge trials and wrote appellate briefs.
CHYNA LAYNE is an actress and film producer originally from East New York, Brooklyn. Layne stars as Shemekka Epps in the hit Netflix series, “She’s Gotta Have It,” directed by Spike Lee. Chyna was recently seen in Universal Pictures’ “The First Purge.” Layne received critical acclaim as Jamaican student, Rhonda, in the Oscar winning film, “Precious,” based on the novel by Sapphire. Additional film credits include HBO's “Life Support,” “Cadillac Records,” “Life of Crime” and “Barbershop 3.” Layne is currently producing the feature films, “Dark Sunday” and “County of Kings.” TV guest star credits include Comedy Central’s Workaholics, TNT’s “Major Crimes.” Layne next stars in the TV One movie, “In Broad Daylight,” premiering Summer 2019.
L’HEUREUX LEWIS-McCOY, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Sociology of Education program in the Department of Applied Statistics, Social Science and Humanities at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development. He holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Sociology from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI (2008) and a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA (2000).
AFRODESIA McCANNON, Ph.D. is a native New Yorker who received her doctorates from the University of California, Berkeley in Comparative Literature (French, English, and German). She is a Clinical Assistant Professor in Liberal Studies at NYU and is the current chair of the Art, Text, Media concentration of the Global Liberal Studies degree program. She is interested in unearthing the autobiographical impulse in the Middle Ages and uncommon expressions of medieval subjectivity. Currently, she is preparing a manuscript on the Vie de Saint Louis, by thirteenth-century author Jean de Joinville, provisionally titled, “Joinville’s Project.” In this work, she argues for a reconsideration of medieval autobiography in the light of, among other things, feminist and critical race theory.
ARI MELENCIANO, M.P.S. is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist, designer, creative technologist, researcher, educator, activist and DJ who is passionate about exploring the relationships between various forms of design and the human experience.
ADEDAMOLA OSINULU, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of Global Liberal Studies at New York University where he investigates and teaches about African cultural production. His current research examines how Nigerian Pentecostals conceive of and make space on the outskirts of the city of Lagos. Osinulu earned his Ph.D. from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures and has held a fellowship with the Michigan Society of Fellows, University of Michigan.
DONAVAN RAMON, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Liberal Studies at Kentucky State University. A specialist in African American Literature, he is a recipient of the 2018–19 Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Currently, he is editing a collection of journal articles to commemorate the ninetieth anniversary of Nella Larsen’s novella Passing, and is revising his book manuscript on the psychoanalysis of racial passing. Each year, he conducts a summer institute at his undergraduate alma mater, Hunter College, where he trains Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellows for graduate study in the humanities.
ROLANDA WEST SPENCER, Ed.D. is the co-founder and Executive Director of Alternative Education Research Institute and author of the germinal work, Reexamining Reentry: The Policies, People, and Programs of the United States Prisoner Reintegration Systems (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017).
ANTHONY THOMPSON, J.D. is a Professor of Clinical Law at New York University School of Law. He has been in the NYU Law Faculty for over 20 years and teaches courses related to criminal law and civil litigation, race, and leadership. His scholarship focuses on race, offender reentry, criminal justice issues and leadership. Prof. Thompson has authored several books in these areas. In his first book, published by NYU Press, Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities, Professor Thompson takes an in-depth look at the issues of Reentry, Race and Politics. He analyzes the media’s involvement in shaping public policy as well as the role that race plays in reentry.
