Learning About South Africa’s Future from Stories of its Past

From L-R, Evan Heib, Kevin Munguia, Jake Penders, Kira Forrester, and R. Bentley Anderson, S.J.
Contributed Photo

Fordham students are learning about South Africa’s future from stories of its past.

Four Fordham undergraduate students and R. Bentley Anderson, S.J, associate chair of the department of African and African American Studies, traveled to South Africa as part of a three-week study tour. The group traversed the southernmost region of the African continent, starting in Cape Town and making their way eastward to Mossel Bay, Grahamstown, Kimberley, Pretoria, and Johannesburg.

The three-week course focused on the history of South Africa, from foreign invasion to the diamond trade to Apartheid, by giving students the opportunity to experience the culture and landscape firsthand.

As the tour concluded back in Cape Town, the group was able to visit Robben Island and the political prison that housed numerous opponents of Apartheid, including Nelson Mandela. Here, the students were able to reflect on their journey and understand how the history of South Africa is shaping the country we see today. 

-Rachel Roman

Fordham professor: Maya Angelou gave us permission to 'love ourselves'

Celebrated poet and essayist Maya Angelou died Wednesday at the age of 86.

As a poet, educator, historian, best-selling author, actress, playwright, civil-rights activist, producer and director, Angelou was hailed as one of the great voices of contemporary literature.

Though she never made an appearance at Fordham, Angelou wrote a closing poem for a book edited by Kevin M. Cahill, director of the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs.

Angelou wrote, “Life Doesn’t Frighten Me,” for Even in Chaos:Education in Times of Emergency (Fordham University Press, 2010), a book that focuses on the need for humanitarian workers to place education on an equal footing with medical care in refugee camps, and to protect camp schools from attacks by militias.

"I told her, 'I want you to get me back to the innocence of the children,' and she gave the book a beautiful ending," Cahill told Fordham in 2010.

In 2008, Angelou gave a speech at nearby Pace University in 2008. Alumna and poet Liz Bowen (FCLC '11), then the editor-in-chief of The Observer, Fordham’s student newspaper for the Lincoln Center campus, covered the talk.

We asked one of our faculty members to share her thoughts on Maya Angelou:

“As a middle schooler in Cincinnati, Ohio, I was bombarded with images, words, and ideas that rarely reflected my experience. When we (Black girls and boys) discovered Maya Angelou, we found a way to write ourselves in, we were given permission to love ourselves despite the ways we were silenced and unseen. She revealed that the blueprint for loving all human beings could be found in our ability to live our lives without fear. May she rest in the beauty and power she created,” said Aimee Meredith Cox, culture anthropologist and assistant professor of performance and African American Studies.

-Gina Vergel

Happening at Fordham's Lincoln Center campus on Friday, April 12, 2013.

African American Slave Burial Database Goes Live

Fordham’s Burial Database Project of Enslaved African Americans, a portal for the public to submit locations suspected of being the site of unmarked graves of slaves, went live today.

The database, which is located at www.vanishinghistory.org, was launched on the 150 anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, which abolished slavery in the United States. 

In a recent ceremony at Fordham’s Lincoln Center Campus, Sandra Arnold, a history student in Fordham’s School of Professional and Continuing Studies (PCS) who is spearheading the project, thanked everyone who helped make the site a reality. 

“In my research on slave burial grounds, I’ve learned that in almost every society in the world, the burial ground of a loved one is considered sacred. The place where the deceased is buried is a symbol, or a monument that the person that lies in that grave meant something to someone, were cared for, and that they were missed,” she said.

"I’ve also learned to believe there are no insignificant people in history, and that all people had a role in shaping in shaping history. Therefore I also believe all people should be remembered.”

Members of the Department of African and African American Studies such as Irma Watkins-Owens, Ph.D., associate professor of history and African American studies, and co-director of the database project, were also on hand for a celebratory champagne toast.

“The launching of this project comes at a really important historical moment. Not only is it timely because this year is the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation; it is also a moment of some urgency, because many of these burial spaces of enslaved people are rapidly vanishing in the memories of the descendents as well as the memories of the communities,” she said. 

“This is a real call to the public to help us to identify and place these spaces in the historical record.”

For more on Fordham’s African American Slave Burial Database, read the article in Inside Fordham. 

—Patrick Verel

Fordham Professor Honored at Brooklyn Public School

Mark Naison (center, wearing all black) with P.S. 257's drum line.
The school's principal, Brian DeVale, is to Naison's right.
(Photo courtesy of Mark Naison)

Mark Naison, Ph.D., professor of African and African-American studies, was an honored guest at P.S. 257 in Bushwick, Brooklyn, on Jan. 20.

“I was deeply moved by the hospitality shown by Principal Brian DeVale and his staff and tremendously impressed by the dedication and talent of the teachers at the school,” said Naison, who was invited to visit to school as a result of an article he wrote, “In Defense of Public School Teachers."

During his visit, Naison visited several classes and ate lunch with the School Leadership Team. He also attended a ballroom dancing class and a performance by the school's drum line.

“It was incredible,” he said. “The students made a tremendous impression on me. The school resembled many of the wonderful schools in the Bronx I visited when I was doing Oral History training for teachers. The children were happy, energetic, intellectually curious and quite astonished to see an old white man rap!”

Yes, Naison’s hip-hop alter ego, the Notorious Ph.D. gave a performance.

“What a great day this was,” he said. “It reinforced my determination to speak out on behalf of some of the most talented and dedicated public servants in our nation—our public school teachers.”

—Gina Vergel

Now Playing on Fordham’s Youtube Channel . . .

Fordham University will welcome Sister Beatrice Chipeta and John Halligan, S.J., to its Rose Hill campus tomorrow, Nov. 11, for the announcement of the winner of the 2010 Opus Awards.

If you want a better idea of what these two Unsung Heroes have done to deserve the Opus Foundation’s attention and consideration, visit Fordham's YouTube Channel and watch clips of them both. First, Sister Beatrice Chipeta:




And Father John Halligan




The award will be announced Thursday, Nov. 11 at 5:15 p.m in Keating First on the Rose Hill campus.

—Janet Sassi

Bronx Youths Let the Beat Drop in Berlin

Fordham GSAS sudent Kathleen Adams, left, in Berlin with students from CUNY Prep
(Photo courtesy of GangwayBeatzBerlin)

Youths from the Bronx will experience hip-hop culture in Berlin as part of a trip organized by a Fordham professor.

Mark Naison, Ph.D., professor of African and African-American studies, and about 10 students from Bronx-based CUNY Prep are in Germany’s largest city this week for the final leg of Bronx-Berlin Connection—a transatlantic hip-hop project.

Hosted by GangwayBeatzBerlin, a music association in which young people experience hip-hop culture on the streets of Berlin, the Bronx-Berlin Connection engages young people from Bronx and Berlin in a year-round cross-cultural exchange program. They use music—particularly, rap and hip-hop—to explore and express the experiences of urban youths globally, the critical challenges they face and the solutions necessary to enact change in their communities.

The project will culminate in a full-length, multi-lingual, cross-cultural rap album to be released later this year.

An online diary by GangwayBeatzBerlin mentioned, “The crew from the hip-hop capitol of the world arrived today,” referring to Naison, Fordham Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) student Kathleen Adams, three CUNY Prep teachers and, of course, the students.

Likewise, Naison is reporting on the experience through the social media. In a Facebook message posted on Saturday, he wrote, “We are having an amazing time in Berlin! We met up with people from GangwayBeatzBerlin, who took us to dinner at a great Turkish restaurant and then took us to a community hip-hop jam in Wedding, an immigrant neighborhood in Berlin, where our kids produced a freestyle cipher. Great chemistry between GangwayBeatz and the CUNY Prep kids.”

A “cipher” occurs when two or more rappers freestyle together in an informal context. But hip-hop is not all Bronx youths have in common with their Berlin counterparts, Naison explained.

“Kids from the Bronx think that their situation is unique. When they get to Berlin, they’ll see lots of kids from immigrant families experiencing similar things—employment struggles, family problems, race issues—and who look at hip-hop as a way to express their feelings about the world they are in,” he said.

Immigrants in Berlin hail from Turkey, the Middle East and various parts of Eastern Europe, said Naison, who previously traveled to Berlin to lecture on the “Multicultural Roots of Bronx Hip-Hop.”

Thanks to GangwayBeatzBerlin, youths from Berlin visited Fordham and the New York City area in November 2008 and again a year later. Many of the young poets and rappers performed at Rose Hill.

“The students for CUNY Prep are going to think they are in the Bronx when they arrive in Berlin. They’ll see ethnic enclaves, graffiti, street food vendors and, of course, hip-hop music,” Naison said before he left.

The trip was subsidized by donations, many which came from Fordham alumni.

“We had an amazing outpouring of support from alumni. Without it, this trip wouldn’t be taking place,” he said.

The CUNY Prep students will perform on Sept. 13 at the United States Embassy in Berlin. They’ll visit and be interviewed at radio stations and a television news crew will be following them as they visit clubs and community centers, Naison said.

GSAS student Kathleen Adams is accompanying the group as a chaperone. A student in the urban studies master’s program, Adams said she hopes to teach youths in Berlin about women in hip-hop, which she researched for her thesis as an urban studies undergraduate at Fordham College at Rose Hill.

—Gina Vergel

The Notorious Ph.D. Strikes Again

Mark Naison, Ph.D., is a professor of History and African American Studies at Fordham.

Watching the Detectives

Mark Naison, Ph.D., professor of African American studies and history at Fordham, is joining the detectives. Naison will be one of the subject matter experts on the PBS series The History Detectives, in the episode airing Monday, February 23, at 10 p.m. on Thirteen/WNET.

The segment concerns whether 1520 Sedgwick Avenue—where Kool Herc (Clive Campbell) held his first parties when launching his career as a DJ—was the birthplace of hip hop.

Naison is the principal investigator for the Bronx African American History Project.

Dr N’s Rhythm Review on the Web

Mark Naison, Ph.D., professor of African American studies and history, and principal investigator of the Bronx African American History Project at Fordham, debuts his YouTube Rap, "The Palin Effect."