The brutal deaths of African Americans George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and others at the hands of police officers five years ago catalyzed for Black communities to unite globally and reignite the Black Lives Matter movement.
The movement also propelled the formation of the Center for Africana Studies at UC Merced with its mission to bring students, staff, faculty and community members together to develop an understanding of and appreciation for the African and African diasporic cultural identities.
“The center was in the works for a number of years, and it became paramount post the George Floyd murder. I think the activities of BLM put it at the forefront of the campus leadership,” said center co-director Muey Saeteurn, a history professor who studies the lived experiences of rural Kenyans or rural Africans and their role in the nation-building process.
The Department of History and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts hit a critical mass of faculty who study Africa and African descendants across the world, including Saeteurn and CAS co-director Professor Sabrina Smith, who studies African-descended people in colonial Mexico.
CAS — initially dubbed the Black Collective — officially launched in summer 2023. “We felt like we were in a privileged position to bring people together to have the conversation,” Saeteurn said.
“We have such a diverse campus, and we do have a sizable number of African students in our graduate programs and undergraduates as well,” Smith said. “Through CAS, we can have these conversations with all of our students and create the space for that type of intellectual growth and community engagement beyond the boundaries of the campus.”
Undergraduate history major Virginia Mateo took Smith’s African Diaspora in Latin America class in 2023. She learned about CAS’ posting for a Student Success Internship.
“Their mission statement really spoke to me,” said the Pomona native who spent two semesters interning with CAS. “At the end of my junior year in 2024, they invited me to join the center as a staff member.”
As a student assistant, Mateo does outreach to her peers, updates the center’s website, designs marketing materials and posts on its social media channels.
The center hosts and co-sponsors initiatives on and off campus. Recent events were UC Merced professors Nicosia Shakes’ presentation of her book, “Women’s Activist Theatre in Jamaica and South Africa” and Kevin Dawson's “Open Water: Afroaquatics and History” session at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association.
CAS, the Division of Equity, Justice, and Inclusive Excellence, Interdisciplinary Humanities Graduate Program, Department of History and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Department of Sociology, Black Research Excellence and Organization of American Historians brought Distinguished Professor Robin D.G. Kelley, the Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA, to campus earlier this month to present “The Responsibility of Black Studies in the Face of Fascism and Genocide.” Over 400 students, faculty, staff and community members attended the OAH Distinguished lecture, which encouraged the campus community to consider past and current threats to education, and individual and collective activism.
Last November, CAS partnered with SSHA to bring Zimbabwean filmmaker, writer and activist Tsitsi Dangarembga to campus, where she was honored as the 2024 Alice and Clifford Spendlove Prize in Social Justice, Diplomacy and Tolerance recipient.
Graduate students participated in a story-making workshop the next day led by Shakes and an intimate question-and-answer session with Dangarembga. They learned about her creative process, participated in their own creative project, and received feedback from Dangarembga and Shakes.
Through CAS, we can have these conversations with all of our students and create the space for that type of intellectual growth and community engagement beyond the boundaries of the campus.
These events, among others, showcase CAS’ multidisciplinary approach and its goal of centering the experiences of Africans and African-descended people across the diaspora.
That’s something Interdisciplinary Humanities Graduate Group Ph.D. student Bethany Padron knows firsthand. She recalled being offered an opportunity to host a book club for Dangarembga’s book, “Nervous Conditions.”
“I thought, ‘I'm African American. Why would they choose me to host this book club of this woman from Rhodesia?’ We have all these wonderful African students who might be a better fit,” Padron said. “And it was such a blessing in disguise. I recognized, in a very artistic way, how my experiencing that book through an Africana lens brought me back to my ancestral homage through my family, and it made me think about things from a much more global perspective.”
Her dissertation research focuses on discussing ideas and creative outlets of liberation with Black women and their experiences by using Black feminist theory to explore performance studies.
“I'm looking at poetry, blues music and informal arts to examine the ideation of Black women's ideas of liberation,” said the second-year graduate student from the Central Valley.
Padron was awarded a travel grant from CAS and spent a week in New Orleans doing research in summer 2024.
“Louisiana is different than the city of New Orleans itself. I wanted to go and explore these ideas of the African diaspora not only from Black women who have migrated there from other places outside of the country but Black women who have migrated there from other places in the United States,” she said. “How have they built their resiliency there and shaped themselves as a Black unit and as a community?”
Mateo also received a CAS travel grant that allowed her and three classmates to travel to Oaxaca for a week to conduct archival research on the history of slavery and African-descended people in Mexico.
“It was very special to me to learn about such a rich culture,” she said. “I am of Mexican descent, so I felt a connection to learning about the African diaspora in Latin America. It is a prominent theme in our contemporary history.”
She presented her research findings at the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association conference.
“Being part of CAS, both as someone who has received a grant and behind the scenes, I see the difference it makes in people's lives because research is not always accessible for everybody,” said Mateo, who is graduating in May and plans to apply for a Ph.D. program in Latin American history.
In addition to helping scholars actualize their research dreams, the center continues to do important work to deepen the understanding of Africa and its diaspora.
“The work that the Center for Africana Studies does to incorporate the African diaspora is timely and necessary for us to understand not only what Africana studies is but everything that comes from it,” Padron said. “CAS can benefit everybody on campus.”
The work that the Center for Africana Studies does to incorporate the African diaspora is timely and necessary for us to understand not only what Africana studies is but everything that comes from it.
