The Legacy and Future of Ethnic Studies at CUNY (Day 2)

With roots in the intertwined movements of racial justice, anti-imperialism and liberation in the 1960s and 70s, the formation of ethnic studies in the United States changed how institutions of higher education teaches race, inequality and the very history of the nation. In celebration of the formation of Ethnic Studies at BMCC, we aim to provide a space for scholars affiliated with CUNY to discuss contemporary scholarship in the field.

Register for the conference. You can register for just one of the days or both.

See the schedule for Day 1.

The following events will be held at either Richard Harris Terrace (RHT) or the Hudson Room (Hudson).

Plenary Speakers

Kwasi Konadu
Kwasi Konadu is John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Endowed Chair and Professor at Colgate University, where he teaches courses in African history and on worldwide African histories and cultures. With extensive archival and field research in West Africa, Europe, Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America, his writings focus on African and African diasporic histories, as well as major themes in world history. He is the author of Many Black Women of this Fortress (Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2022), Africa’s Gold Coast through Portuguese Sources, 1471-1671 (British Academy/Oxford University Press, 2022), the award-winning Our Own Way in This Part of the World: Biography of an African Community, Culture, and Nation (Duke University Press, 2019), The Ghana Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke University Press, 2016), Transatlantic Africa, 1440-1888 (Oxford University Press, 2014), The Akan Diaspora in the Americas (Oxford University Press, 2010), among other books. A father first and foremost, Konadu is also a healer (Tanɔ ɔbosomfoɔ) who studied with his grandfather in Jamaica and then in central Ghana and Brazil as well as a publisher of scholarly books about African world histories and cultures through Diasporic Africa Press. His life work is devoted to knowledge production and the worldwide communities and struggles of peoples of African ancestry.

Michael Partis
Michael Partis is the Executive Director of the Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative: a nonprofit focused on community wealth building with working-class Bronx residents. He currently is a Board Member for the New Economy Project and the Adult Board Chair for the Youth Power Coalition. He is also the co-founder of The Bronx Brotherhood Project, a volunteer-based college success & mentorship program for Black and Latino teens at New Settlement College Access Center. Michael previously was the Director of South Bronx Rising Together (SBRT): a collective impact initiative dedicated to improving health, grade-level reading and math, and post-secondary outcomes in the neighborhoods of Morrisiana and Crotona Park West. An anthropologist by training, Michael teaches in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. He is also a Researcher at the Bronx African American History Project, where he and Professor Mark Naison are editing “After The Fires:” a collection of post-1970s South Bronx oral histories.

If you have any questions, email us at EthnicStudies@bmcc.cuny.edu.

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