The Faculty-Graduate seminar is an intimate intellectual community that comes together to discuss work in progress around a common theme across a wide range of disciplines. Our goal is to establish a small but intellectually diverse and committed group of scholars who will attend all meetings and engage in sustained discourse during the year. Each meeting lasts one hour and twenty minutes followed by dinner. Given these goals and the limited meeting space, we will be accepting only twelve (12) graduate students into each semester’s seminar. We encourage graduate students to commit to both semesters and preference for spring registration will be given to students engaged in the fall seminar. Participation in the African American Studies’ Faculty-Graduate Seminar for one academic year or the equivalent (two semesters) will fulfill one of the requirements for the AAS Graduate Certificate

The Black 1980s: Promises of Inclusion, Perils of Access

From the end of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s to the mid 1990s, Black life in the United States and beyond underwent profound political, social and economic changes.  These transformations have been buried under the language of “post-civil rights era”, telling us little of how that aftermath was experienced in Black communities and among Black people. It remains a period seemingly impervious to historical treatment and understanding. The purpose of our speaker series is to bring light to the tumultuous time of twilight of the twentieth century. Black political thought and struggle did not end with “the sixties” but it changed dramatically, often fractured along the lines of class and gender. The ‘War on Drugs’, demonization of single Black mothers, rising Black poverty and an incipient war on social welfare uneasily co-existed with a historic rise in Black political representation and the emergence of a small but significant Black elite. It was also a quizzical time in terms of the explosion of Black cultural production. Even as Black poor and working-class people were deeply reviled by those in power, Black culture dominated American society.  We seek to understand these developments, their contradictions, and the wide variety of responses they provoked. 

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Joshua Guild are the AY25 Fac-Grad Seminar Faculty Conveners.

Meet The Speaker

Amaka Okechukwu is an Associate Professor of Sociology at George Mason University, specializing in social movements, race and ethnicity, political sociology, urban sociology, qualitative methods, Black politics, ethnography, and oral history. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on the intersection of collective action and racial justice, as well as urban spatial politics. She has published influential works, including "To Fulfill These Rights," which received prestigious awards like the Eduardo Bonilla-Silva Outstanding Book Award and the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Book Award in 2020. Her work also includes digital humanities projects such as "Black Belt Brooklyn," and she has received fellowships and grants from organizations like the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and the Social Science Research Council. Dr. Okechukwu holds a PhD and MA in Sociology from New York University and a BA in Sociology and English from the University of Southern California. She has been featured in media outlets like USA TODAY and The Hill, discussing topics related to racial justice and affirmative action.