Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University announced this week the 2021-22 class of fellows.
“We are happy to welcome an extraordinary cohort of W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute Fellows,” says Gates. “We look forward to an inspiring range of projects next academic year. The spiritual capacity of jazz; art and race in the 19th century; bioethical constraint on technoscience; the life of a fugitive slave and sparse archives; W. E. B. Du Bois and the revitalization of sociology; hiphop, technology, and architecture; the musical thought of Du Bois; comparative historical linguistics, African Atlantic intellectual history, and modernity; a multimedia, interactive project on Ancient Nubia; necropolitics and living-death in Cairo; Afrofeminism and assimilation in France; the Zimbabwe International Book Fair and sexual politics; the history of hip hop production; Brazilian Black queer artivists and decolonization; the prehistory of British Black arts; and the state of Afro-Colombia Studies are among the topics that the 2021-22 Class of Fellows will be addressing at the W. E. B Du Bois Research Institute, housed in the Hutchins Center.”
The W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute Fellowship program invites scholars, artists, public intellectuals, and activists across the humanities and social sciences to pursue independent projects encompassing Africa and its diasporas. Fellows arrive from the U.S., Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Europe to be in residence at the Hutchins Center for either a full academic year or one semester.
The Hutchins Center for African & African American Research supports work in the history and culture of people of African descent the world over and provides a forum for collaboration and the ongoing exchange of ideas. It seeks to stimulate African and African American studies both at Harvard and beyond, and to increase public awareness and understanding of this vital arena. As the preeminent center in the field, the Hutchins Center sponsors visiting fellows, art exhibitions, publications, research projects, archives, readings, conferences, and new media initiatives that respond to and inspire interest in established and emerging channels of inquiry in Africa and its diasporas.
The Hutchins Center has been closely monitoring the pandemic-related directives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Harvard University. As needed, the fellowship program can adapt easily to virtual and hybrid formats.
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