Pan-Africanism in Africa and the U.S.: Marcus Garvey and I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson in Conversation

CSAAD Africa~Diaspora Forum Series 

Zoom link: https://nyu.zoom.us/j/95296862039

This panel event will explore themes of Pan-Africanism. Dr. McDuffie considers the significance of the U.S.Midwest to shaping twentieth-century Pan-Africanism through Garveyism. Dr. McDuffie’s research unveils new research and offers insight into imagining a liberated future Black world. In tandem, Dr. Rashid investigates the ideas, activities, and influences of Isaac Theophilus Akunna Wallace-Johnson, a journalist, trade unionist, Pan-Africanist, and politician, who played a pivotal role in energizing the anti-colonial and national movement in West Africa between the 1930s and 1960s. Untangling this paradox offers interesting insights on different ways in which Pan-Africanism consciousness and politics were shaped and expressed during the colonial period.

Watch Event Recording Here

Dr. Ismail Rashid’s Presentation

Erik S. McDuffie is an Associate Professor in the Department of African AmericanStudies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). His research andteaching interests include the African diaspora, the Midwest, black feminism,black queer theory, black radicalism, urban history, and black masculinity.  He is the author of Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011). The book won the 2012 Wesley-Logan Prize from the American Historical Association and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, as well as the 2011 Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians. His research interests include the African diaspora, the Midwest, black feminism, black queer theory, black radicalism, urban history, and black masculinity.

Ismail Rashid is Professor and Chair of History on the Marion Musser Lloyd ’32. He grew up in Freetown, Sierra Leone and has been teaching at Vassar College since 1998. He received his BA Hons in Classics and History from the University of Ghana, MA in Race Relations from Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada and PhD in African History from McGill University. His primary teaching interests are pre-colonial and modern African history, African Diaspora and Pan-Africanism, and International Relations. His research interests include subaltern resistance against colonialism, public health, and conflicts and security in contemporary Africa. Among his recent books are West Africa’s Security Challenges (2004 with Adekeye Adebajo), The Paradox of History and Memory in Postcolonial Sierra Leone (2013) (with Sylvia Ojukutu-Macauley) and Understanding West Africa’s Ebola Epidemic: Towards a Political Economy(2017) (with Ibrahim Abdullah).