2019 is the 400th Anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans to be sold into bondage in North America: in 1619 at Jamestown.
These Africans were the first of millions that were enslaved to work on plantations established on land stolen from the indigenous peoples of the continent.
The 400 Years of Inequality project is a nationwide observance of this event. Families, organizations, neighborhoods, and cities around the country are observing this anniversary by telling their stories of oppression, resistance, and resilience. The University at Albany community is proud to join this national observance.
In doing so, our goal is to promote radical equality—to help build a new social infrastructure to carry us through the challenges of climate change, decaying physical infrastructure, rapidly evolving jobs, underperforming schools, uneven access to health care and lack of affordable housing.
Schedule of Commemorative Programming
On view through December 7 - University Art Museum
ACE: art on sports, promise and selfhood features over a dozen emerging and internationally recognized artists who use sports and athletic culture to explore how youth, gender, race, promise, and identity are intertwined with athleticism.
https://www.albany.edu/university-art-museum/public-programs
September 24 at 4:30pm - University Art Museum
Talk by Radamés "Juni" Figueroa, artist-in-residence whose work is currently on exhibit in ACE: art on sports, promise, and selfhood
September 26 at 4:15pm and 7:30pm - Campus Center
Talk by Ijeoma Oluo, author of So You Want to Talk About Race
October 8 at 4:30pm – University Art Museum
Talk by Ronny Quevedo, artist whose work is currently on exhibit in ACE: art on sports, promise, and selfhood
October 10 at 7pm - Campus Center
Talk by poet Nikki Giovanni about her memoir A Good Cry: What We Learn from Tears and Laughter
October 18 at 7pm - Page Hall
Film screening of Horror Noire - A History of Black Horror and conversation with director Xavier Burgin
October 20 at 7:30pm - Performing Arts Center
Performance of Black Like Me: An Exploration of the Word N█████
October 22 at 4:30pm - University Art Museum
Talk by Baseera Khan, artist-in-residence whose work is currently on exhibit in ACE: art on sports, promise, and selfhood
October 22 at 6pm - The Hollow Bar + Grill
Join NYS senior historian Ashley Hopkins-Benton to learn about the LGBTQ+ artifacts the Museum currently has, the hidden stories we have coaxed out of our collection, and how we will work to grow the collection in the future.
October 28 at 7pm - Performing Arts Center
Conversation with legendary rapper Rakim as part of the Creative Life Series
October 29 at 7pm - Performing Arts Center
Performance of Education, Liberation! (or Why the Caged Bird Sings)
November 12 at 4:30pm - University Art Museum
Talk by Ashley Teamer, artist-in-residence whose work is currently on exhibit in ACE: art on sports, promise, and selfhood
November 13 at 7:30pm - Performing Arts Center
Performance of Brothers on the Battlefield saluting Civil War and Civil Rights Movement anniversaries
November 15 at 9:45am - Board Room Center West
Talk by Cathrine Hoyo “Gestational Cadmium Exposure, Epigenetic Responses and Metabolic Dysfunction in Black, Hispanic and White Offspring.” Keynote of President’s Forum on Health Disparities.
November 14 to 24 - Performing Arts Center
Performances of Intimate Apparel, a play by Lynn Nottage
November 22 at 7pm - Page Hall
Film screening of Driving While Black and conversation with director Ric Burns and author Gretchen Sullivan Sorin
September 24 at 4:30 pm
Talk by Artist-in-Residence (University Art Museum)
Exhibiting artist Radamés “Juni” Figueroa will engage UAlbany students, faculty, and staff through cross-departmental conversations, workshops, class visits, performances, and exhibition tours. As part of his two-day residency he will speak about his work followed by a Q&A.
Radamés “Juni” Figueroa tropicalizes indoor spaces and architecture by combining organic and existing materials. By utilizing discarded, outmoded sports equipment, the objects are given a second life and purpose, harnessing both aspiration and growth.
“Figueroa is a native of San Juan, Puerto Rico, a city in which the cultural influences and political complexities of the United States and Latin America converge in the midst of a diverse topology featuring mountains, tropical forests, the beach, and the urban center. Originally trained as a painter, Figueroa began to expand his practice to outside the studio in 2008. Much of his recent work involves creating environments that transmit the experience of living in San Juan. ‘Addressing such sensations,’ he has said, ‘enables me to speak of where I come from without addressing the political in a literal way. . . . I like creating environments in which bodies interact with the work. I speak of my experiences through the work, and what I know best is life next to the sea, the heat, the music, and a relaxed aesthetic.’”
September 26
The New York State Writers Institute Presents
Ijeoma Oluo
Bestselling Author
4:15 p.m. Craft talk - Multi-Purpose Room, Campus Center West Addition
7:30 p.m. Conversation/Q&A - Campus Center West Auditorium
Ijeoma Oluo is the author of the New York Times bestseller, So You Want to Talk About Race (2019), a frank how-to manual for engaging in conversation about one of the most sensitive issues of our time.
In her book, Oluo guides readers of all races through subjects ranging from intersectionality and affirmative action to "model minorities" in an attempt to make the seemingly impossible possible: honest conversations about race and racism, and how they infect almost every aspect of American life. Oluo’s work on race has also appeared in The Guardian and other national and international publications.
september2426
OCTOBER 8 AT 4:30PM
Talk by Artist-in-Residence (University Art Museum)
Ronny Quevedo will give an informal presentation about his work followed by a Q+A.
Ronny Quevedo was born in 1981 in Guayaquil, Ecuador. He lives and works in Bronx, New York. For ACE, Quevedo created a site-specific wall work in vinyl titled La Gran Patria (for Alberto Spencer) (2019), that speaks to identity as a place of multiple starting points or origins. He takes this idea of multiplicity and reworks it through notions of mapping, space, globes, and playing fields.
Solo exhibitions include The Sixth Man, James Fuentes Gallery, New York, New York (2019) and Ulama, Ule, Olé, Carol Jazzar Gallery, Miami, Florida (2013). Recent group exhibitions include Pacha, Llacta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York; The World’s Game: Fútbol and Contemporary Art, Perez Art Museum, Miami, Florida (all 2018); EAF17, Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, New York; and no hay medio tiempo / there is no halftime, Queens Museum, Queens, New York (both 2017). He is a recipient of the 2017 Blade of Grass Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art and the 2016 Queens Museum/Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists.
Quevedo received an MFA from the Yale School of Art, New Haven, Connecticut (2013) and a BFA from The Cooper Union, New York, New York (2003).
October 10
Nikki Giovanni
Bestselling Poet
4 p.m. Colloquy
7 p.m. Campus Center Ballroom, University at Albany
Free and open to the public
Nikki Giovanni, activist, mother, professor, firebrand, healer and sage, is one of the leading poets of her generation, a seven-time NAACP Image Award winner, and the first recipient of the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award.
Giovanni presents her new book, A Good Cry: What We Learn from Tears and Laughter (2018), a wide-ranging memoir about the joys and perils of aging; the violence of her parents’ marriage and her early life; the people who have given her life meaning; the grandparents who took her in and saved her life; the poets and thinkers who influenced her; and the students who gave her life purpose.
With more than 50 years of experience as a poet, writer, commentator and activist, Giovanni is deemed a prominent voice of the Black Arts Movement and has provided insightful and bold commentary on issues such as race, gender and inequality.
The NYS Writers Institute and the Department of Africana Studies will welcome Nikki Giovanni to UAlbany on October 10, acknowledging the "400 years of Inequality" as well as the 50th Anniversary of the Department of Africana Studies.
October 18 at 7 p.m.
NEW GOLDEN AGE OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HORROR
HORROR NOIRE—Film screening followed by conversation/Q&A with director Xavier Burgin
7:00 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus
(United States, 2019, 83 minutes, English)
Film historian Dr. Robin R. Means Coleman argues that Hollywood is beginning a new “golden age for black horror films.” HORROR NOIRE, a documentary based on Coleman’s book of the same name, features leading figures of Black horror cinema, including Jordan Peele (GET OUT), Tony Todd (CANDYMAN), and Tina Mabry (MISSISSIPPI DAMNED). The film also explores the history of the genre, shedding new light on how African American characters and creators were used, misused and mistreated across a century of cinema. This is the very first documentary produced by AMC Networks’ new horror video streaming service, Shudder. Twenty-something director Xavier Burgin is an Emmy nominated filmmaker, Sundance Lab Fellow, HBO Finalist, and a director on the Emmy nominated series, Giants, produced by Issa Rae Presents. Cosponsored by “400 Years of Inequality” at UAlbany
For more information, please visit: https://www.nyswritersinstitute.org/horror-noire
Presented with support provided by the Diversity Transformation Fund through UAlbany’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion.
October 20 at 7:30pm
Black Like Me: An Exploration of the Word N█████
UAlbany Performing Arts Center
This multidisciplinary work performed by dance/choreographer Jade Solomon Curtis explores the reverb of a single word in a global community. It considers the effects of the word, all its permutations, its history and its casual use in Hip Hop culture. Combining physical, verbal, visual and sonic language to tell five narratives and perspectives in a unique way, it asks if it is possible to redefine a word that was intended to belittle a people and ultimately provides the singular message: the word cannot be transformed.
Advance tickets: $15 general public / $10 students, seniors & UAlbany faculty-staff
Day of show tickets: $20 general public / $15 students, seniors & UAlbany faculty-staff
Dance Events Page
This engagement is made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Presented by the Performing Arts Center, support is also provided by the University at Albany Foundation, Office of Intercultural Student Engagement, University Auxiliary Services and Residence Inn by Marriott.
October 22, 6-7pm
History Café: Protest, Pride, & Community: Representing LGBTQ+ Stories in the NYSM Collection
The Hollow Bar + Grill
New York State History is rich in stories of LGBTQ+ individuals, their accomplishments, and the fight for equality. Until recently though, these stories were drastically underrepresented in the New York State Museum’s collections. Join NYS senior historian Ashley Hopkins-Benton to learn about the LGBTQ+ artifacts the Museum currently has, the hidden stories we have coaxed out of our collection, and how we will work to grow the collection in the future.
This program is free and located at The Hollow Bar + Kitchen in downtown Albany, New York. Food and drink will be available for purchase. For more information, please call (518) 474-0575 or visit www.nysm.nysed.gov.
October 22 at 4:30 pm
Performance and Talk by Artist-in-Residence Baseera Khan (University Art Museum)
Exhibiting artist Baseera Khan will engage UAlbany students, faculty, and staff through cross-departmental conversations, workshops, class visits, performances, and exhibition tours. As part of her two-day residency she will speak about her work followed by a Q&A.
Baseera Khan’s work Braidrage, is a 12 x 15 foot rock climbing wall, whose ‘rocks’ are formed by casting corners of the artist’s body. Khan climbs the wall wearing a pair of Nike Air Force mid-tops upon which iamuslima is inscribed through Nike’s ID tag project. Early on, Khan found out that the company was being sued for not allowing a customer to embroider the word ‘Muslim’ on the shoe; however, many other religious words were approved. Through a calculated technique of misspelling, Khan legitimized her design.
“New York-based artist Baseera Khan employs music, fashion photography, textiles, installations and performances to grapple with capitalism and its exertion on our bodies, religions and cultures. Rather than considering her art as a form of ‘activism,’ however, her research-based practice brings to the surface the non-neutrality of the spaces that our bodies occupy, especially for those who are disenfranchised by capitalist-driven societies like the United States. In her works, she makes room for ‘exile and kinship,’ as she describes, and the simultaneous existence of rage, vulnerability and tenderness.”
Baseera Khan also shared the following regarding her work: “My next step with this project is to customize multiple shoes together to spell out, or literally write out a letter to Colin Kaepernick, the former quarterback who began kneeling during the United States anthem before games as an action of protest against the country’s injustice towards black Americans, and who has now been embraced by Nike as the face of the ‘Just do it’ campaign.”
October 28 at 7 p.m.
Rakim: Influential Rap and Hip Hop music artist
UAlbany Performing Arts Center
This legendary rapper is interviewed on stage by WAMC's Joe Donahue discussing his creative inspiration, craft and career. A question and answer session with the audience will follow. The Creative Life series is presented by the University at Albany Foundation and produced by the New York State Writers Institute, University Art Museum and UAlbany Performing Arts Center in collaboration with WAMC.
October 29 at 7pm
Education, Liberation! (Or Why the Caged Bird Sings)
Presented by the Department of Music and Theatre at the UAlbany Performing Arts Center
Singer-songwriter and jazz vocalist Dr. Kyra Gaunt voices her personal and professional journey from vulnerability to liberation. Offering an intimate evening of music from the repertoire of Black art songs, the game-songs of black girls and her own original compositions, this one-woman show addresses the experience of being Black while teaching, being a woman professing hip-hop and being without her voice for a year.
Advance tickets: $5 general public / $3 students, seniors & UAlbany faculty-staff
Day of show tickets: $10 general public / $5 students, seniors & UAlbany faculty-staff
Music Department Events
November 12 at 4:30pm
Talk by Artist-in-Residence Ashley Teamer (University Art Museum)
Exhibiting artist Ashley Teamer will engage UAlbany students, faculty, and staff through cross-departmental conversations, workshops, class visits, performances, and exhibition tours. As part of her two-day residency she will speak about her work followed by a Q&A.
Ashley Teamer was born in 1999 in New Orleans, Louisiana. She lives and works in New Orleans, Louisiana. Teamer created an homage to Women’s National Basketball Association superheroes and the legacy of the basketball team her grandmother founded and coached for thirty years, the Dillard Bleu Devils, at Dillard University, a historically black college in New Orleans. Teamer’s multi-layered photo-based collages and paintings are as dynamic as the women depicted.
Recent solo exhibitions include Talk of the Town, Larrie, New York, New York (2019) and SneakerBoy Dreams, 4th Ward Project Space, Chicago, Illinois (2017). Recent group exhibitions include Alternative Mappings, Residency Arts, Los Angeles, California (2019); Women on Womxn, Gochi Gallery Los Angeles LGBT Center, Los Angeles, California; and black is a color, Antenna Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana (both 2018). Teamer is the 2019 Monroe Fellow at the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South School of Liberal Arts, Tulane, New Orleans (2019); and the recipient of the New Orleans Film Festival Emerging Voices Mentee and the Santo Foundation Artist award and Antenna Platforms grant (2018).
Teamer received a BFA in painting and sculpture from Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts (2013).
November 13 at 7:30pm
Brothers on the Battlefield
A multi-media production with a historically informed narrative, this work salutes the 150th Anniversary of the end of the Civil War and the 50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement. Rodney Marsalis Philadelphia Big Brass performs music of that era with narrator JaQuinley Kerr who brings to life the personal letters of those engulfed in that conflict and the inspirational words of Dr. Maya Angelou. Stunning images created by Vanessa Briceño create a breathtaking backdrop to some of our nation’s most celebrated songs.
UAlbany Performing Arts Center
Advance tickets: $15 general public / $10 students, seniors & UAlbany faculty-staff
Day of show tickets: $20 general public / $15 students, seniors & UAlbany faculty-staff
Prime Performances Page
This engagement is made possible through the ArtsCONNECT program of Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation with support from the National Endowment for the Arts. Presented by the Performing Arts Center, additional support is provided by the University at Albany Foundation, Office of Intercultural Student Engagement, University Auxiliary Services, Alumni Association through the Grandma Moses Fund and Residence Inn by Marriott.
November 14 – 24
Intimate Apparel
Presented by the Department of Music and Theatre at the UAlbany Performing Arts Center
Driven by passion and determination to build a better life for herself, Esther, a brilliant African American seamstress in turn-of-the-century New York, diligently saves her earnings and daydreams of the life she longs to create. Sought after for making intimate apparel for diverse clientele, she delicately navigates the complex structures of race, class, and societal divides when a devastating betrayal costs her nearly everything. Written by the first female playwright to win two Pulitzer Prizes, this play offers a powerful story about the resiliency of the human spirit.
Advance tickets: $17 general public / $12 students, seniors & UAlbany faculty-staff
Day of show tickets: $22 general public / $17 students, seniors & UAlbany faculty-staff
Thursdays, November 14 & 21 at 7pm
Fridays, November 15 & 22 at 3pm
Saturdays, November 16 & 23 at 7pm
Sundays, November 17 & 24 at 2pm
Wednesday, November 20 at 7pm
November 15
President's Forum on Health Disparities
Campus Center Board Room West starting at 9:45 AM
Featured speaker is Cathrine Hoyo, Ph.D.
Keynote talk: Gestational Cadmium Exposure, Epigenetic Response and Metabolic Dysfunction in Black, Hispanic and White offspring.
Epigenetics is one way that experience, such as trauma, stress, is embodied, becomes part of the body by changing the way genes are expressed which can affect health throughout life. Some epigenetic changes can be passed from one generation to the next so experience in one generation may be felt by subsequent ones. This provides a mechanism by which later generations feel some or all of those 400 years.
The Keynote talk will be followed by:
- Q & A session;
- Additional talks on Epigenetics by:
- Allison Appleton (UAlbany, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics);
- Jason Herschkowitz (UAlbany, Biomedical Sciences and the Cancer Research Center);
- Gabriel Schlomer (UAlbany, Educational and Counseling Psychology);
- Ravi Gupta (Downstate Health Sciences University, Department of Pathology)
- Sabina Hirshfield (Downstate Health Sciences University, Special Treatment & Research Program)
- A panel analysis and discussion of current opportunities for research and collaboration.
Friday, November 22 at 7 p.m.
Driving While Black
A film screening and conversation/Q&A with director Ric Burns and author Gretchen Sullivan Sorin, presented by the annual Researching New York conference in association with the New York State Writers Institute, the Department of History, and the Institute for History and Public Engagement. Further information on this event and the full Researching New York conference at www.nystatehistory.org. Free and open to the public.
Page Hall, UAlbany downtown campus
135 Western Avenue, Albany
Additional Enrichment
The Department of Africana Studies will offer a two-part discussion based on the theme of 400 years of resistance regarding people of African descent in America. The Department of Africana Studies will offer a discussion based on the theme of 400 years of resistance regarding people of African descent in America. Dr. Oscar Williams will present a lecture on “400 Years (1619 – 2019) of African American Resistance and Revolution” from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, September 25, 2019 in Campus Center (CC) 375.
Dr. Robert Miller (School of Social Welfare) has taken five students to Ghana, Togo, and Benin as part of his Africa policy in social work course in observation of the "400 years of Inequality". Dr. David Hochfelder (Introduction to Public History – Department of History), Dr. Frankie Bailey (Race & Crime School of Criminal Justice), and Dr. Debernee S. Privott (Theories of Crime – School of Criminal Justice) are also connecting their courses with the "400 Years of Inequality" observation.
Intercultural Student Engagement (ISE) will be hosting the ISE Social Justice Conference & Retreat at Dippikill Friday, September 20th - Sunday, September 22nd 2019.
Conference Theme:
Elevating Intersectionality: Tools for Realizing Human Rights
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Robert Miller (School of Social Welfare)
Apply to the ISE Social Justice Conference & Retreat here: View Google Form
The Gender & Sexuality Resource Center (Intercultural Student Engagement) also provides a plethora of resources and services to the UAlbany community and beyond. Information regarding the Identity Exploration Projects and Social Justice Scholars (Gender & Sexuality Resource Center/Intercultural Student Engagement) will also be provided in the coming weeks.
The Multicultural Resource Center (Intercultural Student Engagement) also provides extensive resources and services to the campus community and beyond. Annual programs include the following:
- ALANA Welcome Reception - Meet and greet for new students, faculty and staff to get acquainted with other members of the ALANA community. An incoming ALANA scholar’s first formal introduction to diversity at UAlbany as a Great Dane. (This event will be co-sponsored by the Black Faculty and Staff Association.)
- Spellman Awards - UAlbany’s award ceremony honoring ALANA scholars with G.P.A.s over 3.0
- Cultural Carnival Co-Sponsor w/ SA - Tradition of UAlbany where student orgs gather to showcase their culture and encourage community engagement through cultural appreciation.
- Intercultural Banquet - A tradition started by Liga Filipina, Fuerza Latina, Sankofa and ASUBA to showcase true cultural exchange and appreciation within the UAlbany community.
Additionally, on September 16 at 7:00 PM, the Multicultural Resource Center will host the Latinx Heritage Month Kickoff. Refreshments and additional information will be provided. (Refer to MyInvolvement)
We look forward to your participation in the "400 Years of Inequality" Observance!