Homegoing Performance including music, theatrical performance, and dance
An impressive array of local, national, and international poets, dancers, and artists, including our own incredibly talented students and faculty of UMass Boston's Performing Arts Department
Thursday, May 6, 6:30-8:30 p.m. ET
Free and open to the public
The goal. The Black Lives Matter movement has renewed focus on eliminating the systemic racism that is embedded in all aspects of American life. Homegoing: A Restorative Justice Initiative Colloquium is part of UMass Boston's university-wide process aimed at becoming a leading anti-racist and health-promoting public institution.
The novel. Yaa Gyasi's historical novel Homegoing traces a long history of anti-Blackness, from European colonization in West Africa in the eighteenth century to contemporary mass incarceration and police violence in the United States. The novel and our community discussions will enable us to begin to address these long and ongoing histories of racism, inequity, and injustice.
The webinar. We invite all members of the public and the UMass Boston community to join six virtual discussions of the book this semester. Dr. Tony Van Der Meer (Senior Lecturer II of Africana Studies, UMass Boston) and Dr. Keith Jones (Visiting Assistant Professor, Africana Studies, UMass Boston) will serve as facilitators.
Spring Semester 2021 Programming
The 2/25 author webinar is one of six sessions discussing Homegoing in the spring 2021 semester. The five non-author sessions are also open to the public and can be taken as a 1-credit course (though the for-credit registration deadline has now passed).
Session 1: February 4
6:30-8:30 p.m.
"Homegoing Panel Discussion on the Effects of European Colonialism on African Civilizations, as well as the Afterlife of the Middle Passage throughout the African Diaspora"
Introduction and Welcome by Provost Joseph Berger. Panelists include Dr. Joyce Scott Hope (Clinical Professor of African American Studies, Boston University) and Dr. Chinelo Ejueyitchie (Senior Lecturer I of Africana Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, UMass Boston). Dr. Tony Van Der Meer (Senior Lecturer II of Africana Studies, UMass Boston) and Dr. Keith Jones (Visiting Assistant Professor, Africana Studies, UMass Boston) will facilitate.
Session 2: February 25
6:30-8:30 p.m.
"The Historical Experience of the African Diaspora and the Literary Imagination: A Reading and Conversation with Yaa Gyasi, author of Homegoing"
Introduction and Welcome by Interim Dean of the College of Liberal Arts Jane Adams. Panelists include novelist Yaa Gyasi, Nicholas Johnson (graduate student in Global Inclusion and Social Development, UMass Boston), and Janae Tooley (undergraduate student, Africana Studies and Communications Double Major, UMass Boston). Dr. Tony Van Der Meer (Senior Lecturer II of Africana Studies, UMass Boston) and Dr. Keith Jones (Visiting Assistant Professor, Africana Studies, UMass Boston) will serve as facilitators.
Session 3: March 11
6:30-8:30 p.m.
"Homegoing Panel on the Long History of the Criminalization of Black life in the United States, from Non-Persons to Persons"
Introduction and Welcome by Dr. Patricia Krueger-Henney (Associate Professor, Urban Education, Leadership and Policy Studies, UMass Boston). Panelists include Dean Linda Thompson (College of Nursing and Health Sciences, UMass Boston), Rashaan Hall (Director of the Racial Justice Program for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts), and Clark Arrington (General Counsel for Seed Commons, A Community Wealth Cooperative). Dr. Tony Van Der Meer (Senior Lecturer II of Africana Studies, UMass Boston) and Dr. Keith Jones (Visiting Assistant Professor, Africana Studies, UMass Boston) will serve as facilitators.
Session 4: March 25
6:30-8:30 p.m.
"Homegoing Panel on Culture, Consciousness and Healing within the African Diaspora"
Introduction and Welcome by Imari Paris Jeffries (Executive Director of King Boston and a Trustee of the UMass System). Panelists include Rob "ProBlak" Gibbs (a visual artist and organizer who has transformed the cultural landscape of Boston through graffiti art since 1991), Dr. Aminah Pilgrim (Senior Lecturer II of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies & Critical Ethnic and Community Studies, UMass Boston), and Dr. Thierry Gustave (Senior Lecturer in French, Coordinator of Elementary French Language, UMass Boston). Dr. Tony Van Der Meer (Senior Lecturer II of Africana Studies, UMass Boston) and Dr. Keith Jones (Visiting Assistant Professor, Africana Studies, UMass Boston) will serve as facilitators.
Session 5: April 8
6:30-8:30 p.m.
"Homegoing Student-Led Panel Discussion on Identity, Culture, and Activism"
Introduction and welcome by Dr. Carola Suárez-Orozco (Distinguished Professor of Counseling & School Psychology and the co-founder of Re-Imagining Migration).
Moderated by Hailee Marsh (a master's student in the Critical Ethnic and Community Studies Program at UMass Boston and a teaching assistant for Introduction to Africana Studies).
Panelists include Falianne Forges (a UMass Boston junior, majoring in English & Africana Studies, and resident assistant); Samuel Stephens (a UMass Boston sophomore business management major, and a hip-hop musician and entrepreneur); Sofia CalvoPalavicini (a daughter of Costa Rican immigrants and a UMass Boston junior who is majoring in History and minoring in both Secondary Education and Native American and Indigenous Studies); Abdullah Beckett (a UMass Boston senior majoring in exercise health science and minoring in Arabic Studies, a vice-president of UMass Boston’s NAACP chapter, and a member of UMass Boston’s inaugural My Brother’s Keeper cohort); and Olanike Ojelabi (a fourth-year PhD student in public policy at the McCormack Graduate School at UMass Boston, vice-president of the Pan-African Graduate Student Association, and a Teaching Assistant for Introduction to Africana Studies).
Session 6: May 6
6:30-8:30 p.m.
"Homegoing Performance including music, theatrical performance, and dance"
The evening will celebrate the Restorative Justice Colloquium's campus-wide reading of Yaa Gyasi's beautiful and haunting novel Homegoing. This exceptional evening will be composed of performances by a Ghanian-based dance troupe, Ghana Dance Ensemble, directed by Stephen (Kojo) Agalic; poetic and dramatic performances related to the novel produced by students and alumni of the UMass Boston Performing Arts Department under the direction of professors Rafael Jaen, Jessica Cooper, and Ginger Lazarus; and a poetry reading and original musical composition gifted to us by local, Boston-based community artists Ashley Rose, Thamanai Justine, and Op Browne.
Dr. Tony Van Der Meer (Senior Lecturer II of Africana Studies) and Dr. Keith Jones (Visiting Assistant Professor of Africana Studies) will serve as facilitators.
Register for this webinar.
Join small group breakout discussion (7:30-8:30 p.m.).
Homegoing: A Restorative Justice Initiative Colloquium will also be experienced as a one-credit course — INTR-D 280 - Special Topics, Class #14616 — for some students. Download the syllabus here.
About the Author
Yaa Gyasi was born in Ghana and raised in Huntsville, Alabama. She holds a BA in English from Stanford University and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she held a Dean’s Graduate Research Fellowship.
Homegoing, her debut novel, was published in 2016. At just 26 years old, Gyasi won the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Award for best first book, the PEN/Hemingway Award for a first book of fiction, the National Book Foundation's "5 under 35" honors for 2016 and the American Book Award. In 2020, she was awarded a Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature in 2020.
Contact Us
Questions about the course? Email rebecca.yemo001@umb.edu.
Homegoing: A Restorative Justice Initiative Colloquium
Boston, MA 02125
See Also
The Sankofa Conversation Series on Structural Racism