Each academic year, the Africana Studies Program at Auburn University coordinates a series of academic and cultural lectures in honor of Dr. Patience Essah, retired professor of history and Africana Studies. Lectures expose students to the rigor and breadth of Africana Studies by giving them the opportunity to learn from and engage with leading scholars within the field. The cultural lectures speak to contemporary and historical moments or experiences in ways which allow students to connect with complex or difficult subjects through more a personal interaction.
Previous lectures may be viewed on Auburn Libraries Vimeo.
- Bill Deutsch "Water Related Projects in Rwanda and Kenya"
- Dennis Looney "Freedom Readers: The African American Reception of Dante Alighieri and the Divine Comedy"
- Elijah Gaddis "Gruesome Looking Objects: Racial Violence and the Archives"
- Matt McDaniel "Emigration to Liberia: From the Chattahoochee Valley of Georgia and Alabama, 1853-1903"
- Kelly Kennington "In the Shadow of Dred Scott: St. Louis Freedom Suits and the Legal Culture of Slavery in Antebellum America"
- Earnestine Robinson "The Negro Spiritual"
- Adeola Fayemi "African Immigrant Parenting in the USA: Children of Two Worlds"
- Bernard LaFayette "The Civil Rights Movement in the United States"
- Benjamin Fagan "The Black Press and the American Apocalypse"
- Elizabeth I. Essamuah-Quansah "Auburn in Africa"
- Joan Harrell "The Untold Story: Nurse Eunice Rivers and The Unethical Syphilis Study at Tuskegee"
- Jennifer Brooks "From the Congo to the Convict Lease: Africa in Alabama Coal Mines"
- Tom Hicks "Democracy is Rooted in Accessible, Secure and Fair Elections looking ahead to the 2018 Federal Election"
- Tim Dodge "African American Covers of Country Music Before Ray Charles"
- Michael Battle “Vulnerable Populations, Immigration and Niger Update”
- Lucius Outlaw "On Africana Philosophy”
- Tim Dodge “Rhythm and Blues Goes Calypso: The Incorporation of West Indian Calypso into African American Rhythm and Blues c. 1945-1965”
- Stacey Nickson "After Mandela: South African Education in the Context of Politics, Business and Race"
- Carla Jackson Bell "Views on 'Blackness': An Architectural Discourse"
- Sheyann Webb-Christburg "Turbulent events of winter 1965 in Selma, Alabama"
- Adrienne Duke “Africana Studies and Outreach: An exploration of how to affect change locally and globally”
- Mitchell Brown and Kathleen Hale “The Voting Rights Act and Judicial Professionalization of Race in American Elections"
- David Carter "Mississippi 'Freedom Summer' Voter Registration Drive"
- Shakeer Abdullah "Who is Best Prepared to Support African American and Other Students in the Diaspora in Higher Education"
- Carol Ann Bachl Dennis "Whispers of Freedom: Exploring Laura Beecher Comer's Diary Through the Prism of the Comer Slaves' Resistance"
- Tim Dodge "School of Arizona Dranes: Gospel Music Pioneer"
- Jaena Alabi "An Introduction to Racial Microaggressions"