2010 - 2011
C. Daniel Dawson A multi-talented artist, Prof. Dawson has worked as a photographer, filmmaker, curator, arts administrator, consultant and scholar. He has served as Curator of Photography, Film and Video at the Studio Museum in Harlem (NYC), Director of Special Projects at the Caribbean Cultural Center (NYC) and Curatorial Consultant and Director of Education at the Museum for African Art (NYC). As a photographer, he has shown in over 25 exhibitions. In addition he has curated more than 40 exhibitions including Harlem Heyday: The Photographs of James Van Der Zee and The Sound I Saw: The Jazz Photographs of Roy DeCarava. Prof. Dawson has also been associated with many prize winning films including Head and Heart by James Mannas and Capoeiras of Brazil by Warrington Hudlin. He has worked as a consultant for the Cooper Hewitt Museum, International Center for Photography, Lincoln Center, Ralph Appelbaum Associates and three different divisions of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. As a scholar, he has lectured at the House of World Cultures-Berlin, the Kit Tropenmuseum-Amsterdam, the University of California-Berkeley, University of Texas-Austin, University of Wisconsin-Madison, New School for Social Research, Columbia University, Princeton University and the Federal University of Bahia and Rio de Janeiro-Brazil. Prof. Dawson has also taught seminars on African Spirituality in the Americas at the University of Iowa, New York University and Yale University.
E-mail: cd2277@columbia.edu
Patricia G. Lespinasse obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from St. John’s University, 2002. She received a fellowship to Columbia University, where she has earned an MA and MPhil degree in English and Comparative Literature. At present, she is completing her dissertation at Columbia, tentatively titled "Jazz, Improvisation, and Power: Reconstructing Gender in 20th Century African American Literature and Painting." Her research interests include twentieth century American and Caribbean literature; African American literary and cultural studies; popular music studies; feminist criticism and theory; and African American art history. She served as an Associate Editor of "The New Black Renaissance: The Souls Anthology of Critical African-American Studies," edited by Manning Marable. She is currently the Graduate Student Representative for the Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference (CCASD) at Columbia University.
Email: pgl2002@columbia.edu
Minkah Makalani research interests include black radicalism, nationalism, the African diaspora, and social movements. My current project is a history of the African Blood Brotherhood and their internationalist Pan-Africanist program for organizing around race, class, and national oppression during the New Negro Movement. I am also pursuing a secondary research project on biracial identity among people with one black and one white parent. The central concern there is how such an identity claims whiteness to distinguish itself from blackness, impacts the structure of race and racism, and contributes to the persistence of racial oppression.
Email: mm3932@columbia.edu
Mio Matsumoto came to the United States in 1992. He received an associate degree from Tompkins-Cortlan Community College, Ithaca, New York, in 1994 and a Bachelor's degree in history from the State University of New York at Binghamton, 1996. He received a Master's degree in US history from Binghamton in 1998 with a thesis on the thought of African American communist Harry Haywood. He recieved a fellowship for doctoral study in US history at Columbia University, and completed his dissertation on African American social scientists and the concept of race in 2004. He has been teaching for the IRAAS since 2005. The courses taught inclde Introduction to African American Studies, Black Intellectuals, and African and African American Thought. He is currently writing a book manuscript based on his dissertation, tentatively titled "Poverty of Race: an Intellectual War in Social Science and African American Politics, 1919-1968."
E-Mail: mm936@columbia.edu
Monica R. Miller is a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and holds a Ph.D. in ‘Theology, Ethics, and Human Science’ from Chicago Theological Seminary. Miller received her BA from Fordham University in Religious Studies, and the Master of Theological Studies from Drew Theological School. Her research interests are grounded in theory and method in the study of religion and materialist analyses of popular culture which include a wide range of youth subcultural practices. More generally, Miller applies cultural studies and postmodern approaches to the theoretical formation of the study of religion. Miller is co-editor and contributor with Anthony B. Pinn of a 2009 Special Issue of Culture and Religion journal (Routledge) on ‘Hip-Hop and Religion’ among other publications and is currently working on publishing her dissertation entitled, “The ‘Anti-Proper’ in the Popular: Redescribing the Religious in Hip Hop Culture." Miller is also at work on a second book project entitled, Faith in the Flesh: Manufactured Zones of (In) Significance and has an ongoing research project examining cultural zones of significance among youth subcultures in Habana, Cuba. Miller currently serves as Senior Research Fellow for The Institute for Humanist Studies in Washington, DC.
Email: mrm2188@columbia.edu
