BHM Closing to Include Keynote, Performances and Awards

Stony Brook University’s Black History Month closing program will be held Monday, February 27, and will feature student performances, special award presentations, and a keynote address by Abena Ampofoa Asare, associate professor of Modern African Affairs in the Department of Africana Studies.

Stony Brook University students, faculty, staff and alumni are invited to participate in the event, which will take place in the Stony Brook Union Ballroom from noon to 2 pm. Seating is limited and on a first-come, first-served basis, and a light lunch will be served. RSVP on SB Engaged. Due to space limitations, an RSVP does not guarantee admission.

Asare’s research and writing span questions of human rights, citizenship and transformative justice in Africa and the African diaspora. Her work can be found in The Radical Teacher, Los Angeles Review of Book, The International Journal of Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, African Arguments, among other places. In 2018- 2019, she was scholar-in-residence at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. She has been a faculty mentor for CODESRIA, the Council for Development of Social Science Research in Africa. Her first book, Truth Without Reconciliation: A Human Rights History of Ghana, was chosen as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2018 by the American Library Association. Her upcoming book, When Will the Joy Come: Black Women in the Ivory Tower (University of Massachusetts Press), is forthcoming in August 2023.

In the Black studies tradition of breaking down the walls between the university and the local community, Asare is an active part of racial justice and environmental justice organizing in Suffolk County. In 2022, Asare was named the Advocacy Awardee by the National Council of 100 Black Women – Suffolk County Chapter. She is currently writing a new book about histories of anti-carceral thought and practice in the African continent.

This event is coordinated by the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the Department of Africana Studies and the Black History Month Committee. For more information, call the Office of Multicultural Affairs (Office of Student Life) at (631) 632-9912.