Black Expatriates topic of lecture on March 12 at OSU

Friday, February 29, 2008

Event is free and open to the public.
 
(February 29, 2008   STILLWATER, Okla.) – Kevin Gaines, an expert on U.S. and African-American intellectual and cultural history, will give a talk titled “Black Expatriates in the Age of Civil Rights” at 3:30 p.m. on March 12 at Oklahoma State University.
 
Gaines’ lecture will draw from his recently published work, “American Africans in Ghana,” which examines the experiences of African-Americans living in Ghana during the time of its independence from Britain. The book takes an in-depth look at Kwame Nkrumah, the leader of Ghana and its predecessor state the Gold Coast, who lived in exile after being overthrown by a military coup in 1966.
 
Moving from national to international contexts in addressing the creative tension and intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality and modernity in the African Diaspora, Gaines’ work offers a critical reconsideration of historic communities of protest and reform, says Andrew Rosa, assistant history professor at OSU. “His work points to new and exciting directions in the scholarship on African-American intellectual and social movement history,” Rosa says.
 
Gaines is a history professor and director of the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. He has served as a consultant and adviser on a wide range of projects for several organizations including Oregon Public Broadcasting, the American Historical Association and Princeton Historical Society.
 
Gaines’ previous work, “Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century,” was awarded the John Hope Franklin Publication Prize from the American Studies Association.
 
The event is free and open to the public in Room 123 of the Animal Sciences Building at OSU. Gaines’ presentation is funded by the OSU Arts and Sciences Arts and Humanities Lecture Series and coordinated by the history department. To learn more, phone (405) 744-5680 or visit http://history.okstate.edu .