February 7, 2013
Table of Contents:
In Memoriam: Dr. Tony Martin (1942 - 2013)
Call for Submissions from African American Women and Girls: Michelle Obama Book Project
Faculty Positions in Human Sociogenomics College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Institute for Genomic Biology University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

In Memoriam: Dr. Tony Martin (1942 - 2013)

Professor Emeritus Tony Martin, eminent Garvey Scholar died while in hospital in Trinidad and Tobago.

Dr. Tony Martin is Emeritus Professor of Africana Studies at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, where he taught  from 1973 to 2007. Prior to coming to Wellesley, he taught at the University of Michigan-Flint, the Cipriani Labour College (Trinidad), and St. Mary's College (Trinidad). He has been a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota, Brandeis University, Brown University, and The Colorado College. He also spent a year as an honorary research fellow at the University of the West Indies, Trinidad.

Professor Martin has authored, compiled or edited 14 books. His most recent is Caribbean History: From Pre-Colonial Origins to the Present/(2012) published by Pearson Education. Earlier works include Amy Ashwood Garvey: Pan-Africanist, Feminist and Mrs. Marcus Garvey No. 1, Or, A Tale of Two Amies (2007), Literary Garveyism: Garvey, Black Arts and the Harlem Renaissance/(1983), and the classic study of the Garvey Movement, Race First: the Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association/(1976).

Martin qualified as a barrister-at-law at the Honourable Society of Gray's Inn (London) in 1965, did a B.Sc. honours degree in economics at the University of Hull (England), and the M.A. and Ph.D. in history at Michigan State University.

Martin's articles and reviews have appeared in such journals as the Journal of Negro History; Journal of African American History; American Historical Review; African Studies Review; Washington Post Book World; Journal of Caribbean History; Journal of American History; Black Books Bulletin; Jamaica Journal; Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East; and many others.

His writings can be found in several reference works and encyclopedias, including the UNESCO General History of the Caribbean; the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; American National Biography; the Encyclopedia of African American Business History; International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences; and/Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. He has received numerous academic and community awards, including a grant from the American Philosophical Society. He has reviewed articles and programs for scholarly journals, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Austrian Science Fund. His biographical listings can be found in Who's Who in America; Who's Who in the World; Who's Who Among America's Teachers; Personalities Caribbean; Who's Who Among African Americans; and elsewhere. He has been a reviewer and consultant for publishers and has served as an expert witness for Congressional hearings.

Martin is well known as a lecturer in many countries. He has spoken to university and general audiences all over the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, and England, as well as in Africa, Australia, Bermuda, and South America. In 1990 he delivered the annual DuBois/Padmore/Nkrumah Pan-African lectures in Ghana. In 2004 he was one of the principal speakers at the First Conference of Intellectuals of Africa and the Diaspora, which was sponsored by the African Union in Senegal.

 


Call for Submissions from African American Women and Girls:
Michelle Obama Book Project

 

In 2008 African American attorney Michelle Obama who received an AB from Princeton and a law degree from Harvard became the First Lady of the United States. Given the fact that only 40 years before in their struggle for equality African Americans and the country experienced some of the worst race riots, Obama's ascendance to the most powerful and visible position a woman could hold in the country represented progress. Her First Lady status also drew ire from those who wanted to maintain hegemonic norms and did not grasp or accept the idea of racial equality in the form of an African American First Lady.  

  

Michelle Obama's ascendance as the First Lady remained unprecedented as a woman of power in U.S. history, especially given her unmistakable brown skin, her open discussion of her heritage as the descendant of slaves, and her modest working class background. Ultimately Michelle Obama's story embodied the American Dream, the ideology of  "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps."  

  

Given that the media never covered an African American First Lady she drew enormous attention. They featured affirming images of Obama on the cover of Black and white owned fashion magazines and on television. People also created websites such as Michelle O that followed and praised her fashion and style. The First Lady also faced a barrage of negative media representation and criticism. The New Yorker featured her on the cover as an Afro wearing masculinized terrorist, and the media used coded language that defined her as an "Angry Black woman."

  

This interdisciplinary edited volume will explore African American women and girls' visceral as well as intellectual response to Michelle Obama, as well as their response to the various representations of Obama.  We will explore how the language and images used to depict Obama either affirmed, offended, represented or misrepresented her, and we will look at how this reflected and or impacted African American women and girls as a whole. Following in the tradition of early Black Studies publications we are accepting poems, artwork sent in a jpeg, essays (6,500 word maximum), short stories, and short plays (25 page maximum). Please send a 500 word abstract for the essay, short stories and short plays. We are accepting submissions from now until May 1, 2013. Please send submissions to firstladydepiction@gmail.com 

  
Editors

Michelle Duster is an independent writer, speaker, and personal historian. She has written articles, essays and compiled two books that include the original writing of her great-grandmother, Ida B. Wells - journalist, civil rights activist and suffragist. Ida In Her Own Words (2008) and Ida From Abroad (2010).  She was also a contributor to the book In Spite of the Double Drawbacks:  African American Women in History and Culture (2012). She earned her A.B. in Psychology from Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH, and her M.A. in Media Studies from The New School in New York City.

  

Dr. Paula Marie Seniors holds a BFA in Dance from the City College of New York, a MA in Musical Theater from New York University, and a MA and PhD in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, San Diego. She teaches in the Africana Studies and Sociology Departments at Virginia Tech. Seniors won the Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Prize from the Association of Black Women Historians for her book Beyond "Lift Every Voice and Sing:" The Culture of Uplift, Identity, and Politics in Black Musical Theater (2009). Seniors is currently working on the book manuscript "For Freedom Now:" African American Woman Radical Activists (1957-1990): Mae Mallory, the Monroe Defense Committee and African American Woman Sojourners of the Grenadian and Nicaraguan Revolution which examines the political lives of working class Mae Mallory, Mrs. Ethel Azalea Johnson, and Audrey Proctor. It explores why they chose radical activism, Maoism, Trotskyism, Cubanismo, and self-defense to promote civil rights. It also looks at why they aligned themselves with revolutionary governments in Tanzania, Nicaragua, and Grenada, linking the struggle for African American civil rights to international Revolutions.

  

Dr. Rose C. Thevenin is an Associate Professor of History at Florida Memorial University, Division of Social Sciences, where she teaches African-American History, Black Women's History and Caribbean History.  She was born and raised in Port-au-Price Haiti.  Her degrees includes  a Ph.D  in American History  from Michigan State University,  a Master of Arts degree in American History from the University of Miami . 

She is the Co-founder and Coordinator of Academic Institutions of the Florida Africana Studies Consortium (FLASC).  She  has served as the Chair of the Minority Affairs Committee and was a member of  the John W. Blassingame Committee of the Southern Historical Association (SHA). She is the National Vice-Director of the Association of Women Historians (ABWH) and has published essays on the Black Panther Party.



 

Faculty Positions in Human Sociogenomics
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Institute for Genomic Biology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Position Description
The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, seeks candidates who examine the interdependence of biology and social behavior, with a particular interest in human sociogenomics, to fill multiple faculty positions in the social and behavioral sciences. The new science of genomics reveals that environmental factors can affect the activity of genes, rendering incomplete the deterministic, genes-to-behavior model that has long dominated biology. By providing a biological explanation for how social factors can "get under the skin," sociogenomics allows for a deeper analysis of the microfoundations of human social behavior that can unite the social and life sciences. We seek social scientists who use genomics to inform the interface between biology and classic issues in the social sciences that focus on environmental contributors to human functioning.

We welcome applications from senior and mid-career scholars in various fields - including anthropology, communication, political science, psychology, sociology, and related fields - whose research agenda engages the biological sciences, broadly defined. We also invite biological science scholars whose research lies at the interface with the social sciences. Applicants must have an earned doctorate and qualifications appropriate to appointment with tenure as an Associate or Full Professor. Applicants should have a distinguished publication record with experience with collaborative research projects that bridge the life sciences and social and behavioral sciences; evidence of both graduate and undergraduate teaching excellence; and a strong record of attracting external grants to fund their research. The University of Illinois is positioned to be a global leader in this emerging area of research bridging campus strengths in the social, behavioral and biological sciences and has a significant research culture and resources in the Institute for Genomic Biology and the Beckman Institute.

These senior level positions are part of a new multi-year Strategic Excellence Hiring Program at Illinois that focuses on (a) Information, Technology, and Society; (b) Human Health and Wellness; (c) Energy and Sustainability; and (d) Culture, Communication, and Global Issues. For more information about the Illinois Strategic Excellence Hiring Program, the Human Sociogenomics initiative, and the units participating in this search visit  http://www.humansociogenomics.illinois.edu/ .

To ensure full consideration, application materials should be received by March 15, 2013. Interviews may take place prior to the close date; however no decision will be made until after the close date. The target start date is August 16, 2013 but is negotiable. To apply, create your candidate profile through jobs.illinois.edu  and upload application materials: application letter, curriculum vitae, and contact information for at least three references.

Illinois is an Affirmative Action /Equal Opportunity Employer and welcomes individuals with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and ideas who embrace and value diversity and inclusivity. ( www.inclusiveillinois.illinois.edu).

 

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