Hutchins Center announces second class of Du Bois fellows

Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the newly launched Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, has welcomed 23 first-rate fellows for the 2014-15 academic year.

“We are delighted to welcome one of our most distinguished and diverse class of Fellows of the W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute, housed in the Hutchins Center,” said Gates. A memoir of Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver; biographies of legendary trumpeter-composer Woody Shaw, Mandela, and Toussaint Louverture; DNA studies to re-consider the racial history of Cuba’ hipohop in Senegal; the circulation of the black body in the global art economy; African American folktales; and the dramatic outcome of the Mau Mau torture trial in the British High Court are among the exciting projects which Fellows will be pursuing. “The Hutchins Center, with this class, has quickly secured its place as the preeminent locus for cutting edge thinking and research in African and African American Studies, “ commented Lawrence D. Bobo, the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences and chair of the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. “’Creative’ is the most appropriate word to describe these fellows,” said William Julius Wilson, the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard and chair of the Du Bois Research Fellowship Selection Committee.