Department of African American and African Studies at Ohio State

02/17/2026

ENGENDERING BLACKNESS w/ Dr. Patrice Douglass at OSU is happening in 6 days…

Engendering Blackness w/ Dr. Patrice D. Douglass ( )

The Departments of African American and African Studies, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Comparative Studies and the FREE Center at OSU, invite the public to acritical conversation with author of Engendering Blackness: Slavery and the Ontology of Sexual Violence, Dr. Patrice D. Douglass. Douglass will engage in dialogue with our faculty and students at OSU. Each scholar will unpack Douglass’s paradigmatic shifting text which provocatively confronts the history of slavery, the foundations of anti-Blackness, gender and sexuality and their relationality to the question of sexual violence.

Dr. Douglass will be joined by…

🔴 Dr. Ashley Smith-Purviance (African American and African Studies & Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at OSU)

🔴 Bailey Griffin, Doctoral Student (African American and African Studies at OSU)

🔴 Kwaku Owusu, Doctoral Student (African American and African Studies at OSU)

🔴 Kieran Duhl, Doctoral Student (Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at OSU)

Each discussant will provide remarks and questions that engage Dr. Douglass’s text and Dr. Douglass will respond. We promise that you don’t want to miss this!

When: Monday, February 23 at 5:30 EST

Where: The AAAS Community
Extension Center (905 Mount Vernon Ave
Columbus, OH 43203 )

Or

If you are unable to attend in-person, register and join us virtually: https://bit.ly/PDDouglassAtOSU

(*refreshments will be provided)

See you next Monday!!!

02/04/2026

UPDATE: THIS EVENT WILL NOW BE STREAMED AND RECORDED!!!

Engendering Blackness w/ Dr. Patrice D. Douglass ( )

The Departments of African American and African Studies, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Comparative Studies and the FREE Center at OSU, invite the public to acritical conversation with author of Engendering Blackness: Slavery and the Ontology of Sexual Violence, Dr. Patrice D. Douglass. Douglass will engage in dialogue with scholar Dr. Ashley Smith-Purviance and doctoral students Bailey Griffin, Kieran Duhl and Kwaku Owusu. Each scholar will unpack Douglass’s paradigmatic shifting text which provocatively confronts the history of slavery, the foundations of anti-Blackness, gender and sexuality and their relationality to the question of sexual violence.

When: Monday, February 23 at 5:30 EST

Where: The AAAS Community
Extension Center (905 Mount Vernon Ave
Columbus, OH 43203 )

Or

If you are unable to attend in-person, register and join us virtually: https://bit.ly/PDDouglassAtOSU

(*refreshments will be provided)

11/07/2025

NEXT THURSDAY!!!

The Department of African American and African American Studies at The Ohio State University would like to thank everyone who attended the first event of our 2025-26 Online Lecture Series, “THE HUMAN INTERFACE: Examinations of AI and Its Consequences.” Our Department’s own Dr. Casidy Campbell blew our minds by revealing connections between Blackness and popular modes of music by way of the enfleshed motivations of AI. We thank her for delivering such a timely lecture!

However, we are engaging Part II of the series in two weeks and we want to invite you all over again. Next, we will be joined by Dr. Nicholas Brady( ) on Thursday, November 13, 2025 at 4PM EST.

Here is more information on his lecture:

THE ALGORITHMIC PLANTATION

Description: Racial slavery remains the unthought dimension of the history of machine intelligence in both normative and critical accounts. This talk will conceptualize the entanglement of blackness and machine intelligence as arising from the obscured algorithmic dimension of antiblack captivity. This investigation reveals that antiblackness is constitutive of the desire for artificial intelligence beyond the paradigmatic scope of “bias” or “inequality” that frames even radical critique.

Registration: https://osu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_pTg8J8LFTSiffsm4jNjrhw

11/06/2025

JOIN THE CEC FOR MOVIE NIGHT!

On Friday, November 14, 2025, there will be a FREE screening of the newly restored documentary ‘James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket’ at the African American and African Studies Community Extension Center, located at 905 Mt. Vernon Ave, Columbus, OH 43203.
This powerful film, directed by Karen Thorsen, offers a deeply moving portrait of Baldwin’s life, activism, and enduring legacy. The screening will be followed by a conversation with Thorsen herself and a reception—providing a unique opportunity to engage with Baldwin’s work and its relevance today.

11/04/2025

Join us for a roundtable discussion of Dr. Maxamed Abumaye's Black Muslim Refugee: Militarism, Policing and Somali American Resistance to State Violence on Wednesday, November 5 at 4:30 in 101 Hale Center

11/02/2025

Happening tomorrow!

BLACK STUDIES MATTERS!
a lecture series sponsored by the Mellon Foundation

BLACK STUDIES AND THE WHITE POWER PRESIDENCY

Keynote lecture & Fireside Chat with Dr. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Princeton University

Attacks on Black Studies predate the Trump Administration, which intensified efforts to suppress the teaching of the history, culture, & politics of African Americans & the African diaspora. While mass media often highlights attacks on diversity, equity, & inclusion initiatives, broader agendas seek to dismantle Black Studies programming. As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, the nation cannot be understood without Black history at its center. In 1968, Black Studies established an intersectional & interdisciplinary institutional space to examine the cultural, social, & political lives of African-descended peoples while confronting racism & oppression. The field has traced how Black communities generate life-affirming practices & resist structures of injustice.

Monday, November 3, from 11AM to 12:30PM EST

Registration: http://go.osu.edu/blackstudiesmatter_nov

10/30/2025

The Department of African American and African American Studies at The Ohio State University would like to thank everyone who attended the first event of our 2025-26 Online Lecture Series, “THE HUMAN INTERFACE: Examinations of AI and Its Consequences.” Our Department’s own Dr. Casidy Campbell blew our minds by revealing connections between Blackness and popular modes of music by way of the enfleshed motivations of AI. We thank her for delivering such a timely lecture!

However, we are engaging Part II of the series in two weeks and we want to invite you all over again. Next, we will be joined by Dr. Nicholas Brady( ) on Thursday, November 13, 2025 at 4PM EST.

Here is more information on his lecture:

THE ALGORITHMIC PLANTATION

Description: Racial slavery remains the unthought dimension of the history of machine intelligence in both normative and critical accounts. This talk will conceptualize the entanglement of blackness and machine intelligence as arising from the obscured algorithmic dimension of antiblack captivity. This investigation reveals that antiblackness is constitutive of the desire for artificial intelligence beyond the paradigmatic scope of “bias” or “inequality” that frames even radical critique.

Registration: https://osu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_pTg8J8LFTSiffsm4jNjrhw

10/28/2025

PROFESSOR SPOTLIGHT

We celebrate very own Dr. Maxamed Abumaye who recently published his first book, ‘Black Muslim Refugee: Militarism, Policing, and Somali American Resistance to State Violence’ with UC Press!

What’s the book about?:
This multisited project, the first of its kind, exposes the links between US military violence abroad and police brutality at home through a profound exploration of Somali refugee lives.

You can learn more by attending his book talk at the Hale Center (Room 101). Dr. Abumaye will be in conversation with Drs. Nimo Abdi and Nima Dahir.

When: Wednesday, November 5 at 4:30 PM

10/25/2025

🔺Intersections of Carceral Studies and Black Studies

📖: Over the summer, the Department of African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University hosted our inaugural Summer Residency Program! Eight Ph.D. candidates whose intellectual agenda sits at the intersection of carceral studies and Black Studies were among our residents at our Community Extension Center. Dr. Orisanmi Burton was gracious enough to join our department for a workshop and lecture.

❤️: The students were incredible, as they shared their amazing projects! We thank them for not only joining AAAS for a fantastic and transformative week but we thank them for reminding us of the necessity of community-engaged research and practice. Finally, we thank our friends and faculty in AAAS and the CEC for assisting with the residency. We also offer a special thanks to the inaugural Summer Residency for organizing such an impactful experience.

10/23/2025

BLACK STUDIES MATTERS!
a lecture series sponsored by the Mellon Foundation

BLACK STUDIES AND THE WHITE POWER PRESIDENCY

Keynote lecture & Fireside Chat with Dr. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Princeton University

Attacks on Black Studies predate the Trump Administration, which intensified efforts to suppress the teaching of the history, culture, & politics of African Americans & the African diaspora. While mass media often highlights attacks on diversity, equity, & inclusion initiatives, broader agendas seek to dismantle Black Studies programming. As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, the nation cannot be understood without Black history at its center. In 1968, Black Studies established an intersectional & interdisciplinary institutional space to examine the cultural, social, & political lives of African-descended peoples while confronting racism & oppression. The field has traced how Black communities generate life-affirming practices & resist structures of injustice.

Monday, November 3, from 11AM to 12:30PM EST

Registration: http://go.osu.edu/blackstudiesmatter_nov

10/22/2025

The Department of African American and African American Studies at The Ohio State University presents the 2025-26 Online Lecture Series…

THE HUMAN INTERFACE: Examinations of AI and Its Consequences

Wednesday, October 29, 2025 at 4PM EST

BEYOND BLACKFACE: THE UNCANNY IN AI AS PRESENCE AND AESTHETIC
w/ Dr. Casidy Campbell, The Ohio State University

Description: This talk examines the emerging phenomenon of AI generated “black” artists by engaging examples such as the AI R&B artist Xania Monet in addition to AI generated music on Spotify. As a unique and emerging distinct aesthetic, without the human, it is more than digital blackface, which Dr. Campbell terms the cybernetic uncanny. In fact, these new AI models generate blackness without a black person as a referent or as an object to project “blackness” unto. Dr. Campbell presents a terrain for thinking about how we can talk about this as AI seems to scramble or muddle how we’ve thought about race and representation in the West, and why we need to be more antagonistic to the temporal, ideological, and material pushes of tech evangelism.

Registration: https://osu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_t4X9BH60SQmBPTimIm5NeQ

Thursday, November 13, 2025 at 4PM EST

THE ALGORITHMIC PLANTATION
w/ Dr. Nicholas Brady, Bucknell University

Description: Racial slavery remains the unthought dimension of the history of machine intelligence in both normative and critical accounts. This talk will conceptualize the entanglement of blackness and machine intelligence as arising from the obscured algorithmic dimension of antiblack captivity. This investigation reveals that antiblackness is constitutive of the desire for artificial intelligence beyond the paradigmatic scope of "bias" or "inequality" that frames even radical critique.

Registration: https://osu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_pTg8J8LFTSiffsm4jNjrhw