News and Announcements

CAAS Director Kevin Gaines, current President of the American Studies Association, had the honor of presenting the Distinguished Public Service Award of the American Studies Association to Mary Frances Berry at this year's annual meeting. In addition to the award, he also presented Berry with an original art work by Marianetta Porter, an artist and professor in the UM School of Art & Design.

Fight the Power! The Spike Lee Reader, co-edited by CAAS Associate Professor Robin Means-Coleman along with Northern Illinois University Associate Professor Janice Hamlet, has won the National Communication Association African American Communication and Culture Division's 2009 Outstanding Book award.

Stephen Ward's Students on Strike course - about Detroit's Northern High School student walkout in 1966--was recently featured in the LSA Magazine.

Congratulations to staff members Faye Portis and Elizabeth James for their many years of service at the University. Faye is celebrating 20 years of service while Elizabeth is celebrating 10 years. Both will be recognized at the LSA Annual Staff Achievement Award Ceremony held on December 4th. Elizabeth was also recently featured in the University Record Online staff spotlight

CAAS is 40! CAAS celebrates its 40th anniversary this academic year with an exciting schedule of programs, the culmination of which will be a major conference to be held March 18-20, 2010. Confirmed speakers include Grace Lee Boggs. Please check this space for updates.

The Center is also marking the 50th anniversary of Motown Records with featured courses, a film series, the recent community-wide Motown Book Club discussion of Gerald Early's, One Nation Under a Groove and the upcoming symposium "Stevie Wonder and the Making of Motown," to be held on February 19-20, 2010.

Karyn Lacy's book, Blue Chip Black, was selected recently as co-winner of the 2008 Oliver Cox Best Book Award, conferred this year by the American Sociological Association’s Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities.

Scott Ellsworth gave the keynote address for the opening of the John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation in Tulsa, OK.

Magdelena Zabrowska's book, James Baldwin's Turkish Decade: Erotics of Exile, was reviewed in the
New Yorker as well as the Abu Dhabi paper The National.

CAAS is now on Facebook!

 

Upcoming Events

  • November 30: Abdul “Duke” Fakir of Motown's the Four Tops

    As a part of the Motown at 50 celebration, Abdul “Duke” Fakir of the Motown artistic group, the Four Tops, will speak on the history of Motown.

    01:00 PM  - 02:30 PM . ,  Kuenzel Room, Michigan Union

  • December 03: Motown at the Movies: Mahogany

    Part of the Michigan Celebrates Motown at 50 series.

    08:00 PM  - 10:00 PM . ,  Trotter Multicultural Center

  • December 09: CAAS Africa Workshop

    Bachir Diagne”The Oath of the Hunters and the African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights”. Professor of French and Romance Philology from Columbia University.

    5:30 PM  - 7:00 PM . ,  4700 Haven Hall, CAAS Conference Room