The Unholy Trinity: Immigrating while Black and African

media release: Africa Talks is a new monthly talk series purposefully launched by the African Studies Program at UW-Madison in collaboration with the African Center for Community Development, Inc to coincide with the 50^th Anniversary of Africa at Noon. This year, we want to celebrate 50 years of sharing scholarships on campus by reminding our community that the work we do must extend beyond the walls of the university. Every last Wednesday from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., advanced graduate student affiliates of the African Studies Program will present a one-hour talk to community members at the Community Relations office in UW South Madison Partnership (UWSMP). Read more about this partnership at Capital City Hues.

Feb. 28:

African migration to the United States has grown significantly in the last several decades, bringing to the fore a number of interrelated socio-historical, cultural, and political processes. Although fairly small, in comparison to other migrant groups who have longer histories and trajectories in the U.S., this growth in African migration has seen a related increase in migrant literature, films, music, art, and other forms of cultural production. In considering this population growth and its corresponding cultural production realities, this talk will investigate two overlapping questions: What does it mean to migrate while Black, and while African in African migrant literature? 

Speaker’s Bio

Harry Kiiru is a PhD candidate in the Department of African Cultural Studies with a minor in African American Studies. His dissertation titled The Culturally and Racially Body in Motion: How Sub-Saharan African Immigrants Become Black in the United States, is a study of the new African diaspora’s racialization processes of incorporation into the ethno-racial hierarchal order within the United States and how they negotiate this identity. The study begins with the 1959-63 East African Students’ Airlift which saw almost eight hundred students attend schools in the U.S. and Canada. The Airlift as a concrete historical moment allows me to construct a periodization that runs from the 1950s to the present. Methodologically, he employs a mixed-method approach, incorporating archival research, African migrant literature and filmic analysis, and self-ethnography.