The Griot Institute for the Study of Black Lives and Cultures
Spring 2025 Conference

Please note that all events marked as Zoom available can be accessed at https://bucknell.zoom.us/j/98912374160?pwd=nrpfjZ09EpDI3Lrq0GiELV47W8tQFl.1

12:00 – 5:00 pm: (Optional Activity) Samek Art Museum Exhibition – Show Me Your Papers/ A Ver, Y Tus Papeles? 
Location: Samek Art Museum (Elaine Langone Center, 3rd floor)
This exhibition presents artists whose work on paper deals with issues of borders, migration, and dual identity, as explored through print media. Curated by Eddy A. López, Associate Professor of Art, and Miguel A. Aragón, Associate Professor of Art, College of Staten Island CUNY.

Anytime: (Optional Activity) Brawley Bust 
Location: Vaughan Lit Patio
Located outside of the Vaughan Literature Building, the installation features a listening post and a bust of Edward McKnight Brawley, Bucknell’s first African American graduate, class of 1875. 

7:00 pm: (Optional Activity) Film – Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Location: The Campus Theatre, an historic art deco movie theatre, located at 413 Market St.
Visit campustheatre.org for details. 

12:00 – 1:00 pm: Lunch with Bucknell’s Faculty Learning Series
Location: Terrace Room (Elaine Langone Center, 2nd floor)
Friday Learning Series
Topic: Decolonial Education and Liberatory Learning. How can we actively develop intentional teaching practices that provide our students liberatory learning environments and curricula? We will share perspectives from 5 students and 1 faculty working through ideas of decolonial education and Liberatory learning. We will use a framework that builds on the MLK Week call “Learning to Action through King’s words.”
Presenters: Cymone Fourshey, Mercy Ifiegbu, Barbara Wankollie, Rose Nyounway, Holiness Kerandi, and Jackline Masetu

1:00 – 1:30 pm: Ryleigh Roberts ‘25 (Graduate Student) – Mapping Rememory Project
Location: Walls Lounge (Elaine Langone Center, 2nd floor)
In keeping with Morrison’s method of rememory, this project investigates the transitory liminal contexts of space and place wherein the past and present communicate, conflict, and converge. In these contexts, the linearity of time crumbles, revealing the wounds of the past that are still gaping.

1:00 – 1:30 pm: Check-in available 
Location: Walls Lounge (Elaine Langone Center, 2nd floor)

1:30 – 2:25 pm: Black California Gold Book Launch with author Wendy Thompson
Location: Walls Lounge (Elaine Langone Center, 2nd floor) ZOOM Available
Join The Griot Institute and Bucknell University Press, alongside poet Wendy Thompson to celebrate the newest publication in the Griot Project Book Series, Black California Gold. In this arresting debut poetry collection, Thompson traces the past and present of California’s Bay Area, exploring themes of family, migration, girlhood, and identity against a backdrop of urban redevelopment, advanced gentrification, and the erasure of Black communities. 

2:30 – 3:00 pm – Check-in available 
Location: Outside of the Elaine Langone Center Forum (2nd floor)

2:30 – 4:15 pm: Panel 1: Marronage, Exclusion, and Marginalization in Art and Politics 
Location: Elaine Langone Center Forum (2nd floor), ZOOM Available 
Discussant – Dr. Jaye Austin Williams, Chair and Associate Professor of Critical Black Studies
Q&A Moderator – Peg Cronin, Writing and Teaching Consultant

*Benjamin Barson – Maroon Resonance: Fugitive Ecologies of Sound and Jazz Spatiality
*Oluwafunmilayo Akinpelu – AI-Driven African Art: Advancing Decoloniality Beyond Borders
*Richard Mbih – The Politics of Cameroon-Anglophone Conflicts: Betrayal, Complexity and Marginalization
*Eddy Lopez – Show Me Your Papers/ A Ver, Y Tus Papeles?

4:15 – 5:00 pm: (Optional Activity) Samek Art Museum Exhibition – Show Me Your Papers/ A Ver, Y Tus Papeles?
Location: Samek Art Museum (Elaine Langone Center, 3rd floor)
This exhibition presents artists whose work on paper deals with issues of borders, migration, and dual identity, as explored through print media. Curated by Eddy A. López, Associate Professor of Art, and Miguel A. Aragón, Associate Professor of Art, College of Staten Island CUNY.

4:15 – 5:00 pm: (Optional Activity) Department of Art & Art History, Ekard Artist-in-residence Performance – tukituktuk
Location: Meet on Malesardi Quad
This performance presents artist Patricia Villalobos Echeverria’s tukituktuk participatory art storytelling project. This site-specific project was produced during a month-long arts residency in Beijing’s Feijiacun Village, a vibrant community mostly inhabited by rural migrants. Research on how its residents navigate displacement, migrant life, and transition underpinned the development of this project, which involved audio recording Feijiacun dwellers who agreed to anonymously share their personal stories. Jump in the tuk tuk to hear the interwoven oral stories and take a ride inside this ubiquitous form of informal transportation common in the Global South.

5:00 – 5:30 pm: BREAK; Check-in available
Location: Walls Lounge (Elaine Langone Center, 2nd floor)

5:30 – 7:00 pm: Opening Remarks, Dr. C. Cymone Fourshey; Dinner/Keynote Speaker, Dr. Michael Sawyer
Location: Walls Lounge (Elaine Langone Center, 2nd floor), ZOOM Available
Please join us for dinner, followed by the keynote speaker, Michael Sawyer, Associate Professor of African American Literature & Culture in the Department of English at the University of Pittsburgh. 
Keynote talk: Ramifications of Ramifications: Toni Morrison’s Third World

7:00 pm: (Optional Activity) Film – Becoming Led Zeppelin. 
Location: The Campus Theatre, an historic art deco movie theatre, located at 413 Market St.
Visit campustheatre.org for details. 

7:30 pm: (Optional Activity) – Houston Ballet II 
Location: The Weis Center for Performing Arts
Houston Ballet II is the second company of Houston Ballet, America’s fourth largest ballet company. Comprised of a stellar array of young dancers from around the world, Houston Ballet II is under the direction of Artistic Directors Julie Kent and Stanton Welch AM. They will perform: Grand Pas de Deux from Don Quixote, Act II, A Dance in the Garden of Mirth and Sleeping Beauty, Act III. Tickets can be purchased from the Campus Box Office. 

8:00 – 8:30 am: Light breakfast available
Location: Bucknell Hall (Loomis Street)

8:15 am: Opening Remarks by Dr. C. Cymone Fourshey
Location: Bucknell Hall

8:30 – 10:15 am: Panel 2: Imagining the Unimaginable: Decolonial Praxis and Wellbeing 
Location: Bucknell Hall (Loomis Street), No ZOOM
Discussant – Meenakshi Ponnuswami, Associate Professor of English
Q&A Moderator – Terri Norton, Associate Dean for Students and Strategic Initiatives; Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering

*Mbih Jerome Tosam – Health and Wellbeing in African Thought: A Decolonial Approach
*Winnifred Brown-Glaude – Imagining the Unimaginable: Decolonizing neoliberal knowledge systems; Imagining a Post-neoliberal future for post-colonial states like Jamaica
*Karmella Haynes – Improving Biomedical Engineering Curricula to End the Production of Faulty Biotechnologies from Colonial Research Practices
*Jaruam Xavier – Capoeira – A Source For Decolonization in Dance

10:15 am -10:30 am: BREAK

10:30 am – 1:00 pm: Workshop on Black Ecologies with Keynote Speakers 
Location: Forum (Elaine Langone Center, 2nd floor); No ZOOM
A lunch break will be provided in the Center Room (Elaine Langone Center, 2nd floor).
Workshop: description coming soon
Guest speakers: 
*Justin Hosbey, Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley
*J. T. Roane, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Geography at Rutgers University; Author of Dark Agoras: Insurgent Black Social Life and the Politics of Place
*Teona Williams, Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Geography at Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences

1:00 – 1:30 pm: BREAK (Optional Activity) Samek Art Museum Exhibition – Show Me Your Papers/ A Ver, Y Tus Papeles?
Location: Samek Art Museum (Elaine Langone Center, 3rd floor)
This exhibition presents artists whose work on paper deals with issues of borders, migration, and dual identity, as explored through print media. Curated by Eddy A. López, Associate Professor of Art, and Miguel A. Aragón, Associate Professor of Art, College of Staten Island CUNY.

1:00-1:30 pm: BREAK (Optional Activity) Ryleigh Roberts ‘25 (Graduate Student) – Mapping Rememory Project
Location: Hildreth-Mirza 113

1:30 – 3:15 pm: Panel 3: Teaching and Learning through Decolonial Approaches  
Location: Hildreth-Mirza Great Room, ZOOM Available
Discussant – Saniya Cheatom ‘27
Q&A Moderator – Athaliah Elvis ‘26

*Daniela Perdomo-Chavez ‘25- Hidden in Plain Sight: Afro-descendants and the Untold Story of El Salvador
*Marla L. Jaksch – Immigration Justice Fellows Program: Toward Liberatory Learning
*alma khasawnih – Teaching with Grief 
*Mercy Ifiegbu ‘26, Jackline Masetu ‘27, Rose Nyounway ‘27, Barbara Wankollie ‘25 – Decolonizing the lens of historical images: HOW DO I SEE ME

3:30 – 5:00 pm: Panel 4: Reclaiming Our Decolonial Stories of Food, Music, and Self 
Location: Hildreth-Mirza Great Room, No ZOOM 
Discussant – Cymone Fourshey, Professor of History and International Relations, Director of the Griot Institute
Q&A Moderator – Athaliah Elvis ‘26

*Shaheryar Asghar ‘28 – Storytelling through an Intersection of First-Person and Third-Person Narratives
*Alisha Jones – Ultrasonic Tastemaker: Towards a Critical Gastromusicology
*Ree Joseph – Reclaiming Heritage & Rewriting Our Stories: Antiguan Strategies of Resistance

5:00 – 5:30 pm: BREAK  (Optional Activity) Ryleigh Roberts – Mapping Rememory Project
Location:  Hildreth-Mirza 113

5:30 – 7:00 pm: Closing Conference Dinner
Location: Hildreth-Mirza Great Room
Please join us for a closing meal and wrap-up discussion on conference and possibility of a conference publication.

7:00 pm: (Optional Activity) Special Event – An Evening With Mike Masse’ 
Location: The Campus Theatre, an historic art deco movie theatre, located at 413 Market St.
Tickets can be purchased at https://www.campustheatre.org/special-events/. 

10:00 am – 5:00 pm: (Optional Activity) Samek Art Museum Exhibition – Show Me Your Papers/ A Ver, Y Tus Papeles? 
Location: Samek Art Museum (Elaine Langone Center, 3rd floor)
This exhibition presents artists whose work on paper deals with issues of borders, migration, and dual identity, as explored through print media. Curated by Eddy A. López, Associate Professor of Art, and Miguel A. Aragón, Associate Professor of Art, College of Staten Island CUNY.

11:00 am – 12:00 pm: (Optional Activity) Gospel Music Sunday
Location: Rooke Chapel 
Join the Rooke Chapel Congregation to celebrate the rich legacy of gospel music with the Rooke Chapel Gospel Music Fellow, Rev. Angela Jones.

1:00 pm: (Optional Activity) Film – Dr. Strange Love 
Location: The Campus Theatre, an historic art deco movie theatre, located at 413 Market St.
Visit campustheatre.org for details.