Africana Studies Lecture Series

The Department of Africana Studies offers two lecture series.

The Ralph Pruitt Lecture, Arts and Media Series is a scholarly program that features scholars, professionals and performing and visual artists. The lecture series celebrates the legacy of the late Dr. Ralph Pruitt, the first director of the Department of Africana Studies, who valued and appreciated the black culture and academic excellence.

The Curtis Wilson Lecture Series is a scholarly program that promotes research in the area of Africana Studies. It provides a platform for scholars to present lectures on various topics in the interdisciplinary field of Africana Studies. The lecture series honors the legacy of the late Curtis Wilson, former director of the Department of Africana Studies, who advocated for an appreciation of black culture, history and scholarship.

"I’ve Been Bound By It: Representing Capitalist Enclosures in the Black Rust Belt"
Featuring Dr. Tara L. Conley, Associate Professor, School of Media and Journalism at Kent State University
Wednesday, March 25, 2026
4:30 - 5:30 p.m.
In-Person: Berkman Hall 136 - Reception to follow in Berkman Hall 137

Tara L. Conley is an interdisciplinary scholar and media maker with established research and creative agendas. Her research and multimedia production engage scholarship and methods across media studies, feminist studies, Black studies, digital humanities and science and technology studies. 

Dr. Conley was the 2021-2022 Race and Technology Practitioner Fellow at Stanford University. In 2013, she founded "Hashtag Feminism" to locate and archive feminist discourse by way of tracking Twitter hashtags on the web. In 2015, she produced the documentary Brackish about life in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Her most recent film, Dry Bones, a full-length documentary film about “Dynamite Ike” Maxwell, a legendary Black high school football player from Elyria, Ohio, whose life dramatically changed after his brother was shot by a police officer in 1975. Dry Bones has been featured at the Cleveland Film Festival and Karamu House and selected for the Little Venice Film Festival in London April 2026. 

Dr. Conley's work has been published in Feminist Media Studies, The Black Scholar Journal and New Media & Society. She also serves on the editorial board of Women's Studies Quarterly. 

Her presentation, “I’ve Been Bound By It: Representing Capitalist Enclosures in the Black Rust Belt,” calls attention to the representations and geographies of containment in the place-based documentary film Dry Bones and contends that place-based documentary, when rooted in Black storytelling and critical spatial analysis, becomes a powerful site for challenging capitalist enclosures and imagining otherwise and argues that place-based documentary offers a unique medium to both reveal and resist these enclosures, particularly as they manifest within Black Rust Belt geographies.

A reception will follow the event.