Rutgers Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice

Continuing the goal of serving as both a platform and a gathering space, ISGRJ’s second pilot digital initiative is Justice Archives, a comprehensive, interactive and inclusive scholarship archive of all current and past events, signature and sponsored research projects, programs and initiatives, undertaken by Rutgers faculty with the support of ISGRJ.

Vulnerable Beauty: A Signature On the Soundstage Event featuring Ocean Vuong

This February, we had the honor of hosting New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed poet and essayist Ocean Vuong for our signature on the soundstage Institute event at Alexander Library on the Rutgers—New Brunswick campus.

It was an incredibly captivating and powerful conversation between Ocean Vuong and our co-moderators Carlos Decena, Acting Institute Director, and Cross-Campus Director of Undergraduate Intellectual Life at the ISGRJ, and Professor of Latino and Caribbean Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, and Dr. Allan Punzalan Isaac, Professor of American Studies and English and Associate Humanities Dean at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

Vuong read from his latest New York Times bestselling poetry collection, Time is a Mother (Penguin Press 2022), nominated for Best Poetry in 2022 by Publishers Weekly and a finalist for the Griffin prize, and shared his extraordinary background. Born in Saigon, Vietnam and raised in Hartford, Connecticut in a working class family of nail salon and factory laborers, he was educated at nearby Manchester Community College before transferring to Pace University to study International Marketing. Without completing his first term, he dropped out of Business school and enrolled at Brooklyn College, where he graduated with a BA in Nineteenth Century American Literature. He subsequently received his MFA in Poetry from NYU, and went on to become a recipient of a 2019 MacArthur "Genius" Grant.

The Black Women Speakers of Prominence Series: An Evening of Music and Social Justice Honoring Ruby Sales and Musings of Race in America by Lucy Anne Hurston

At the beginning of March, we honored and celebrated legendary civil rights activist Ruby Sales at Rutgers—Newark. Ruby is one of 50 civil rights leaders showcased by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. At the age of 17, she marched in the Selma to Montgomery marches of 1965. She has worked as a human rights advocate in Washington, D.C., and across the south.

Ruby was greeted by a standing ovation and received special tributes from Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Senator Cory Booker.

The event was hosted by Dr. Melanie R. Hill, Assistant Professor of English Literature, Music, Theology and American Studies at Rutgers University—Newark and featured music performances by American actor and singer-songwriter Chaz Lamar Shepherd and his band, and a spoken word performance by acclaimed poet, activist and artist Ursula Rucker.

Later that month, Named Term Chair Melanie Hill also hosted a special lecture by the niece of legendary author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston at Rutgers—Newark.

Professor Lucy Anne Hurston is a social scientist committed to the parallel discipline, "Sociology: the Study of Social Behavior Within and Between Groups." Lucy’s research is deeply connected to questions her aunt raised decades ago focused on race, ethnicity, and culture. Bringing these issues to the forefront in numerous arenas, Lucy explores the social world around her, centering, identifying, describing, and eventually solving social problems in her orbit.

As owner of  Hurston Research LLC for over 23 years, Lucy has played a critical role in exploring and disseminating Zora's knowledge through her research. She also continues to advocate for social change and equity in her volunteer work which centers on survival support systems of food and housing. 

"Public Enemy:" An Exhibition and Reception featuring Newark Artist Bleriot Thompson

In March, we also hosted the opening reception for our inaugural signature exhibition celebrating the work of Newark-based artist Bleriot Thompson and his series “Public Enemy,” on March 19 at Rutgers-Newark in collaboration with Paul Robeson Galleries, and its Director and Chief Curator Anonda Bell, who helped oversee the art installation and exhibition at the ISGRJ offices at Rutgers-Newark.

The opening reception featured Bleriot Thompson in a moving and powerful conversation about the inspiration behind his work and his hopes for its impact with Jamilah Malika Abu-Bakare, Instructor of Professional Practice in the Department of Africana Studies at Rutgers-Newark.

The artwork from Thompson’s “Public Enemy” series will be on display until December 13, 2024, at our Institute Newark office, located on the 2nd floor of Ruth Bader Ginsberg Hall at 15 Washington Street, Newark, NJ 07102 and is free and open to the public. Each piece has a QR code below it which viewers can scan to hear insight from the artist talking about about how he was inspired to create it, what it represents and what he hopes viewers will take away from it.

Watch the full conversation between Bleriot Thompson and Jamilah Malika Abu-Bakare here:

The Race and Religion Lecture Series

The Race and Religion Series continued under ISGRJ-Newark Campus Director Mayte Mercado-Green this year. The series seeks to center conversations about the intersections of race and religion, and the racialization of religion, from historical and contemporary perspectives, in the U.S. and globally.

The spring 2024 series focused on Islam in Africa. One of the consequences of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade was that West African Muslims preceded much of the rest of the Muslim world in their confrontation with imperial power, market economies, and the moral questions they engendered. Later European colonization and the subsequent process of decolonization, and the tensions between discriminating hierarchies of race and the moral commitments of religion, conditioned conflicting ways of imagining community and group membership.

The following lectures and speakers were featured:

- From Newark to Cairo and Black Again: Black Muslims and the Afro-Arab Imaginary with Dr. Rasul Miller. Click below to watch the full lecture by Dr. Miller:

- Global Circuits of Difference with Dr. Mbaye Lo

- And Global Circuits of Difference with Dr. Madina Thiam. Click below to watch the full lecture by Dr. Thiam:

The 2024 Dakar Translation Symposium: Africa and Her Globalization — Accra Edition

The second edition of the Dakar Translation Symposium: Africa and Her Globalization (DTS) - Accra Edition was held from June 3-6, 2024 at the University of Ghana, Accra. The symposium brought together people invested in Africa and her Diasporas to engage questions of language, history, archive, translation, culture, and diaspora that shape the discourses surrounding Africa and Her Globalization across intellectual fields and disciplines. 

This second edition explored some of the most urgent issues in the fields of social sciences and humanities including literature, history, sociology, gender, anthropology, economy, and law, among others. The working languages for DTS 2024 were: Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Twi, and Wolof.

Partner institutions co-sponsoring the symposium included the Office of Inclusion and Equity at NYU Abu Dhabi, the Arts and Humanities Division at NYU Abu Dhabi, Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar, the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University, Rutgers Global, the Department of French at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, the Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora at NYU Washington Square, the Office of Global Inclusion, Diversity, and Strategic Innovation at NYU, NYU Accra, Assane Seck University in Ziguinchor, Senegal, the J. H. Kwabena Nketia Archives of the Institute of African Studies, and the University of Ghana.