African Studies

Poet Cheswayo Mphanza (‘16) will read from his award winning collection, The Rinehart Frames. Mphanza was born in Lusaka, Zambia and raised in Chicago, Illinois. He earned a B.A. in English from Middlebury College and an MFA in poetry from Rutgers-Newark. His work has appeared in the New England Review, the Paris Review, Hampden-Sydney Review, Boston Review, and elsewhere.

Robert Trent Vinson is Frances L. and Edwin L. Cummings Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies at the College of William and Mary. He will be speaking on the century-long transnational linkages between African Americans and black South Africans – in entertainment, sports, religion, and politics – as they collectively worked to dismantle the global color line and ultimately helped end the white supremacist apartheid system.