- 2115 Summit Avenue, Mail 57P
Saint Paul, MN 55105
Heather Shirey
University of St. Thomas, Minnesota, Art History, Faculty Member
- Mapping Street Art and Crisis Artists and writers producing work in the streets – here considered broadly to include... moreMapping Street Art and Crisis
Artists and writers producing work in the streets – here considered broadly to include tags, graffiti, murals, stickers, and other installations on walls, pavement, and signs – are in a unique position to respond quickly and effectively in a moment of crisis. Street art’s ephemeral nature often serves to reveal very immediate and sometimes fleeting responses, often in a manner that can be raw and direct. At the same time, the context of a crisis, street art has the potential to transform urban space and foster a sustained political dialogue, reaching a wide audience. For all of these reasons, it is not surprising to see an explosion of street art around the world created in response to moments of crisis, such as the Covid-19 global pandemic and the uprisings in the summer of 2020, a global response to the murder of George Floyd.
Over time and as the ongoing Covid-19 crisis unfolded, the Urban Art Mapping Covid-19 Street Art database (https://covid19streetart.omeka.net/) has sought to document examples of Covid-19 related street art from around the world. The database will serve as repository for images and a future resource for scholars and artists by way of metadata that is freely available. In addition, the project involves an analysis of the themes and issues that appear in street art, explored in relation to local experiences, responses, and attitudes. Additionally, the George Floyd and Anti-Racist Street Art database (https://georgefloydstreetart.omeka.net) serves to archive and analyze graffiti and street art created as a form of activism and response to systemic racism and police violence.
My presentations and publications, working with my research group Urban Art Mapping, provide an overview of the methodological challenges and issues involved in creating a global database of street art at a moment when all of us have limited access to the streets and provide an argument for undertaking this effort. In addition, our team's research draws on images in the database to analyze the role of street art in the context of global crisis.edit
Research Interests:
The COVID-19 Street Art Database is a crowdsourced collection of more than five hundred individual records containing images of street art, including stickers, tags, light projections, muralsall manner of artistic expression in the... more
The COVID-19 Street Art Database is a crowdsourced collection of more than five hundred individual records containing images of street art, including stickers, tags, light projections, muralsall manner of artistic expression in the streets, in public space, written on or affixed to the built environment. This is more than an archive of visual expression; it is an archive of vernacular communicative acts, communication in process, expressing the concerns and emotions of cultural groups-especially as expressed by those who do not see themselves as part of the power structure. An exploration of this collection of images reveals that street art can address the fears and confusion surrounding all that accompanies a pandemic like COVID-19. Like verbal vernacular narrative forms, we argue that street art can make external our cultural responses to the experience of crisis. It can connect people to each other during extended periods of isolation such as quarantine, offer alternative narratives regarding relations of power and previously existing conditions of oppression and exploitation, comment on the nature of public space, and indeed multiply the impact of all these messages as well as pertinent advice and direction about safety and health-especially in a moment when in-person contact around the world has been curtailed.
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Art in the streets, and here I refer to graffiti, murals, stickers, paste-ups and other installations on walls, the pavement and signs, is uniquely positioned to respond quickly, effectively and sometimes playfully in a moment of crisis.... more
Art in the streets, and here I refer to graffiti, murals, stickers, paste-ups and other installations on walls, the pavement and signs, is uniquely positioned to respond quickly, effectively and sometimes playfully in a moment of crisis. Its placement in public space means that street art has the ability to reach a wide audience but to be effective it must be easily consumable in a single glance, speaking in a visual language that is clear and direct. In many places throughout the world, our movement in shared space was restricted due to the pandemic. In a time of social isolation, street art takes on additional significance as a form of communication and interaction.
By its nature, street art is interactive, engaging with people as they traverse the city. Art, like play, can serve to facilitate conversation and interaction. Like play, street art is frequently improvisational. Artists working in the street often approach their work in a playful manner, creating amusing and seemingly lighthearted images to capture attention. At the same time, street art is often used to express dissent in an oppressive political climate, frequently offering a critical assessment of the structural inequities and human rights issues that are exacerbated in a time of crisis (Konstantinos and Tsilimpounidi 2017; Awad and Wagoner 2017; Bloch 2020; Urban Art Mapping 2020). This critical stance may also be communicated in a playful manner, appearing lighthearted while conveying a serious political message.
This photographic essay is an examination of the work of two prolific street artists who address Covid-19 through art in the streets: The Velvet Bandit, a paste-up artist in Northern California, and Assil Diab, also known as SudaLove, a muralist who was working in Khartoum, Sudan, during the early months of the pandemic. These artists bring to us perspectives from two continents: North America and Africa. These two artists were working artists prior to the pandemic but both SudaLove and The Velvet Bandit expressed a new urgency to bring their artistic practice to the streets in the context of this global crisis. SudaLove created a number of murals in a short period of time in 2020 while The Velvet Bandit has continued to produce works addressing Covid-19, often interwoven with pieces addressing other issues such as Black Lives Matter, elections and reproductive rights.
In the works investigated here, both The Velvet Bandit and SudaLove create artistic interventions in the street as a means of engaging with Covid-19 in a manner that was light and playful but also serious and political. As is typical of street art, their work is highly accessible, using simple visual language. At the same time, each piece requires deeper contextual knowledge to understand the underlying political and social significance.
The interviews referenced in this photographic essay were conducted by members of the Urban Art Mapping research team, an interdisciplinary group that created and maintains the Covid-19 Street Art Database.
By its nature, street art is interactive, engaging with people as they traverse the city. Art, like play, can serve to facilitate conversation and interaction. Like play, street art is frequently improvisational. Artists working in the street often approach their work in a playful manner, creating amusing and seemingly lighthearted images to capture attention. At the same time, street art is often used to express dissent in an oppressive political climate, frequently offering a critical assessment of the structural inequities and human rights issues that are exacerbated in a time of crisis (Konstantinos and Tsilimpounidi 2017; Awad and Wagoner 2017; Bloch 2020; Urban Art Mapping 2020). This critical stance may also be communicated in a playful manner, appearing lighthearted while conveying a serious political message.
This photographic essay is an examination of the work of two prolific street artists who address Covid-19 through art in the streets: The Velvet Bandit, a paste-up artist in Northern California, and Assil Diab, also known as SudaLove, a muralist who was working in Khartoum, Sudan, during the early months of the pandemic. These artists bring to us perspectives from two continents: North America and Africa. These two artists were working artists prior to the pandemic but both SudaLove and The Velvet Bandit expressed a new urgency to bring their artistic practice to the streets in the context of this global crisis. SudaLove created a number of murals in a short period of time in 2020 while The Velvet Bandit has continued to produce works addressing Covid-19, often interwoven with pieces addressing other issues such as Black Lives Matter, elections and reproductive rights.
In the works investigated here, both The Velvet Bandit and SudaLove create artistic interventions in the street as a means of engaging with Covid-19 in a manner that was light and playful but also serious and political. As is typical of street art, their work is highly accessible, using simple visual language. At the same time, each piece requires deeper contextual knowledge to understand the underlying political and social significance.
The interviews referenced in this photographic essay were conducted by members of the Urban Art Mapping research team, an interdisciplinary group that created and maintains the Covid-19 Street Art Database.
Research Interests:
Afro-Catholic festivals in the Americas. Performance, representation, and the making of black Atlantic tradition. Edited by Cécile Fromont. (Africana Religions.) Pp. xii + 203 incl. 6 figs and 10 colour plates. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019. £63.95. 978 0 271 08329 2more
Since 25 May 2020, George Floyd’s death at the hands of the Minneapolis police has sparked civil uprisings throughout Minnesota. In the context of this intense crisis, street art transforms urban space and fosters a sustained political... more
Since 25 May 2020, George Floyd’s death at the hands of the Minneapolis police has sparked civil uprisings throughout Minnesota. In the context of this intense crisis, street art transforms urban space and fosters a sustained political dialogue, reaching a wide audience and making change possible, as seen in art throughout the Twin Cities and eventually the world. For example, the mural depicting George Floyd painted by local artists on the sidewall of Cup Foods at 38th St and Chicago in Minneapolis initially transformed a location that was a tragic marker of an extrajudicial anti-Black murder into an important community space for memorialization, organizing, fellowship, and healing, but it also became a site of conflict and negotiation. Graffiti was spray-painted onto plywood-covered store windows, which business owners put up in fear of riots. Images of anger and hope covered those boards. Our research discusses what will happen to art such as this, who wants to preserve it and why, how it could be used in the future, and what that means for anti-racism efforts in the Twin Cities. Keywords: Physical preservation, Collecting, Non-Profit Organizations, Social Justice, Anti-racist Street Art
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Since 25 May 2020, George Floyd's death at the hands of the Minneapolis police has sparked civil uprisings throughout Minnesota. In the context of this intense crisis, street art transforms urban space and fosters a sustained... more
Since 25 May 2020, George Floyd's death at the hands of the Minneapolis police has sparked civil uprisings throughout Minnesota. In the context of this intense crisis, street art transforms urban space and fosters a sustained political dialogue, reaching a wide audience and making change possible, as seen in art throughout the Twin Cities and eventually the world. For example, the mural depicting George Floyd painted by local artists on the sidewall of Cup Foods at 38th St and Chicago in Minneapolis initially transformed a location that was a tragic marker of an extrajudicial anti-Black murder into an important community space for memorialization, organizing, fellowship, and healing, but it also became a site of conflict and negotiation. Graffiti was spray-painted onto plywood-covered store windows, which business owners put up in fear of riots. Images of anger and hope covered those boards. Our research discusses what will happen to art such as this, who wants to preserve it an...
Research Interests:
Heather Shirey In the streets and plazas of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, representations of the orixás, the deities of the African-Brazilian religion Candomblé, are visible throughout the city. Mural paintings appear on walls and signs... more
Heather Shirey In the streets and plazas of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, representations of the orixás, the deities of the African-Brazilian religion Candomblé, are visible throughout the city. Mural paintings appear on walls and signs where they blend in with advertisements and graffiti, allowing motorists to contemplate the entire pantheon of orixás while filling up the gas tank (Fig. 1). A sculpture of Exú, the guardian of the crossroads and the orixá who oversees all forms of communication, is positioned, most appropriately, in front of the city’s central post office (Fig. 2); a painted mermaid associated with Yemanjá overlooks the sea (Fig. 3); and on the Dique do Tororó, a large lake and recreation zone in the middle of the city, a group of orixá statues dances in a circle on the surface of the water (Fig. 4). Richly varied in scale and medium, visual references to Candomblé in the streets of Salvador are so frequent that they blend in with the surrounding urban landscape, mergi...
Research Interests: History and African Arts
In Beautiful/Ugly, Sarah Nuttall brings together eighteen essays on the concept of beauty and ugliness in Africa and its diasporas. This collection challenges Western-based philosophical constructs of beauty by examining the very... more
In Beautiful/Ugly, Sarah Nuttall brings together eighteen essays on the concept of beauty and ugliness in Africa and its diasporas. This collection challenges Western-based philosophical constructs of beauty by examining the very mutability of beauty in its relationship with ugliness. More particularly, Nuttall’s introduction and several contributions respond to Elaine Scarry’s On Beauty and Being Just (1999), a book based on her 1998 Tanner Lectures onHumanValues at Harvard University. In her introduction, and especially in relation to Scarry’s reflections on beauty, Nuttall calls for a broadened understanding of aesthetics from a global perspective, leading to a more fluid understanding of the precarious boundaries between beauty and ugliness.
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Strings of beads made of plastic, glass or clay are the most common and visible material representations of the Candomblé orixás (deities) in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. At the most basic level, Candomblé beads are symbolic representations... more
Strings of beads made of plastic, glass or clay are the most common and visible material representations of the Candomblé orixás (deities) in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. At the most basic level, Candomblé beads are symbolic representations of the orixás. When they are consecrated with a bath of sacred herbs or blood from an offering, beads share in the axé—the spiritual force that resides in all living things and impregnates the entire Yoruba-Atlantic universe. With the appropriate offering, beads do more than represent the divine, they become the divine, providing their owners with a continual link to the spiritual force of the orixá and the Candomblé community. Based on extensive interviews and participant-observation, this fieldwork-based research focuses on Candomblé beads and the multiple roles they play in the lives of those who invest them with power and make them an important part of their spiritual lives. Ultimately, beads are symbols of status, protection, and affiliation w...
Yinka Shonibare’s Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle, installed on the Fourth Plinth of London’s Trafalgar Square from May 24, 2010, to January 30, 2012, temporarily transformed a space dominated by the 19th-century monumental sculpture of Lord... more
Yinka Shonibare’s Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle, installed on the Fourth Plinth of London’s Trafalgar Square from May 24, 2010, to January 30, 2012, temporarily transformed a space dominated by the 19th-century monumental sculpture of Lord Horatio Nelson, Britain’s most famous naval hero. When installed in Trafalgar Square, Shonibare’s model ship in a bottle, with its sails made of factory-printed textiles associated with West African and African-European identities, contrasted dramatically with the bronze and stone that otherwise demarcate traditional sculpture. Shonibare’s sculpture served to activate public space by way of its references to global identities and African diasporic culture. Shonibare’s Nelson’s Ship, this paper argues, inserted a black diasporic perspective into Trafalgar Square, offering a conspicuous challenge to the normative power that defines social and political space in Great Britain. The installation in Trafalgar Square was only temporary, however, and the work...
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By Frederica Simmons, Amber Delgado, Rachel Weiher, Eve Wasylik, Adem Ojulu, Olivia Tjokrosetio, Shukrani Nangwala, Heather Shirey, Paul Lorah, and David Todd Lawrence As a multidisciplinary, multigenerational, and multiracial research... more
By Frederica Simmons, Amber Delgado, Rachel Weiher, Eve Wasylik, Adem Ojulu, Olivia Tjokrosetio, Shukrani Nangwala, Heather Shirey, Paul Lorah, and David Todd Lawrence
As a multidisciplinary, multigenerational, and multiracial research team, the Urban Art Mapping Project collaborates with and in support of community voices through vernacular art in the streets. While street art may be ephemeral and fleeting, it can reveal immediate responses to events and make externally visible what people think, believe, or feel, individually and collectively. In the context of crisis, street art can reach a global audience, transform and activate urban space, and foster a sustained critical dialogue.
As a multidisciplinary, multigenerational, and multiracial research team, the Urban Art Mapping Project collaborates with and in support of community voices through vernacular art in the streets. While street art may be ephemeral and fleeting, it can reveal immediate responses to events and make externally visible what people think, believe, or feel, individually and collectively. In the context of crisis, street art can reach a global audience, transform and activate urban space, and foster a sustained critical dialogue.
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Since 25 May 2020, George Floyd’s death at the hands of the Minneapolis police has sparked civil uprisings throughout Minnesota. In the context of this intense crisis, street art transforms urban space and fosters a sustained political... more
Since 25 May 2020, George Floyd’s death at the hands of the Minneapolis police has sparked civil uprisings throughout Minnesota. In the context of this intense crisis, street art transforms urban space and fosters a sustained political dialogue, reaching a wide audience and making change possible, as seen in art throughout the Twin Cities and eventually the world.
For example, the mural depicting George Floyd painted by local artists on the sidewall of Cup Foods at 38th St and Chicago in Minneapolis initially transformed a location that was a tragic marker of an extrajudicial anti-Black murder into an important community space for memorialization, organizing, fellowship, and healing, but it also became a site of conflict and
negotiation. Graffiti was spray-painted onto plywood-covered store windows, which business owners put up in fear of riots. Images of anger and hope covered those boards. Our research discusses what will happen to art such as this, who wants to preserve it and why, how it could be used in the future, and what that means for anti-racism efforts in the Twin Cities.
Keywords: Physical preservation, Collecting, Non-Profit Organizations, Social Justice, Anti-racist Street Art
For example, the mural depicting George Floyd painted by local artists on the sidewall of Cup Foods at 38th St and Chicago in Minneapolis initially transformed a location that was a tragic marker of an extrajudicial anti-Black murder into an important community space for memorialization, organizing, fellowship, and healing, but it also became a site of conflict and
negotiation. Graffiti was spray-painted onto plywood-covered store windows, which business owners put up in fear of riots. Images of anger and hope covered those boards. Our research discusses what will happen to art such as this, who wants to preserve it and why, how it could be used in the future, and what that means for anti-racism efforts in the Twin Cities.
Keywords: Physical preservation, Collecting, Non-Profit Organizations, Social Justice, Anti-racist Street Art
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Over time and as the ongoing Covid-19 crisis unfolds, the Urban Art Mapping Covid-19 Street Art database (https://covid19streetart.omeka.net/) seeks to document examples of Covid-19 related street art from around the world. The database... more
Over time and as the ongoing Covid-19 crisis unfolds, the Urban Art Mapping Covid-19 Street Art database (https://covid19streetart.omeka.net/) seeks to document examples of Covid-19 related street art from around the world. The database will serve as repository for images and a future resource for scholars and artists (metadata from the database is available freely for research purposes). In addition, the project will involve an analysis of the themes and issues that appear in street art, explored in relation to local experiences, responses, and attitudes.
Research Interests:
Yinka Shonibare’s Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle, installed on the Fourth Plinth of London’s Trafalgar Square from May 24, 2010, to January 30, 2012, temporarily transformed a space dominated by the 19th-century monumental sculpture of Lord... more
Yinka Shonibare’s Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle, installed on the Fourth Plinth of London’s Trafalgar Square from May 24, 2010, to January 30, 2012, temporarily transformed a space dominated by the 19th-century monumental sculpture of Lord Horatio Nelson, Britain’s most famous naval hero. When installed in Trafalgar Square, Shonibare’s model ship in a bottle, with its sails made of factory-printed textiles associated with West African and African-European identities, contrasted dramatically with the bronze and stone that otherwise demarcate traditional sculpture. Shonibare’s sculpture served to activate public space by way of its references to global identities and African diasporic culture. Shonibare’s Nelson’s Ship, this paper argues, inserted a black diasporic perspective into Trafalgar Square, offering a conspicuous challenge to the normative power that defines social and political space in Great Britain. The installation in Trafalgar Square was only temporary, however, and the work was later moved to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, where it is on permanent display. This paper provides an investigation of the deeper historical references Shonibare made to the emergence of transnational identities in the 19th century and the continued negotiation of these identities today by considering the installation of Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle in relation to both sites.
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Chapter in Patrick A. Polk, Roberto Conduru, Sabrina Gledhill, and Randal Johnson, eds., Axé Bahia: The Power of Art in an Afro-Brazilian Metropolis, 130-141. University of California Los Angeles, 2018. (note: Nominated for CAA’s Alfred... more
Chapter in Patrick A. Polk, Roberto Conduru, Sabrina Gledhill, and Randal Johnson, eds., Axé Bahia: The Power of Art in an Afro-Brazilian Metropolis, 130-141. University of California Los Angeles, 2018. (note: Nominated for CAA’s Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections, and Exhibitions)
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Translation of the books in the series Latin America in Translation / en Traducción / em Tradução, a collaboration between the Consortium in Latin American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University and... more
Translation of the books in the series Latin America in Translation / en Traducción / em Tradução, a collaboration between the Consortium in Latin American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University and the university presses of the ...
Santería Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-Cuban Religion by David H. Brown Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. xx + 413 pp., 27 color, 108 b/w illustrations, notes, glossary, bibliography, index. $95.00 (cloth), $38.00 (softcover). The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic Worl...more
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Three issues ago (African Arts 41 (3): 10-12), we began a discussion of what it means for an artist to engage in an Africa-grounded practice, as opposed to a diasporic one. In this issue, Frank Ugiomoh and Bukky Gbadegesin take on Uche... more
Three issues ago (African Arts 41 (3): 10-12), we began a discussion of what it means for an artist to engage in an Africa-grounded practice, as opposed to a diasporic one. In this issue, Frank Ugiomoh and Bukky Gbadegesin take on Uche Okeke's Natural Synthesis and its metastasized forms before, during, and after the Nigerian civil war. Heather Shirey speaks of the other side of diaspora, in the imagination of Afro-Cuban-American artist Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons. John Peffer reconsiders South Africa's complicated status as a national but also international artworld player. Elsbeth Court considers the relation of a major installation, The Dollar Falls, in Zimbabwe
to the current national tragedy. And nearly
everyone invokes El Anatsui.
to the current national tragedy. And nearly
everyone invokes El Anatsui.
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... Francis Ugiomoh Art history is an apt ground for the defini-tion of national ideologies owing to its abil-ity to probe the ... Martin's Press. ... No less a global grandee than the Ghanaian-Nigerian... more
... Francis Ugiomoh Art history is an apt ground for the defini-tion of national ideologies owing to its abil-ity to probe the ... Martin's Press. ... No less a global grandee than the Ghanaian-Nigerian transna-tional professor El Anatsui posits an ecological case for place:
art grows out ...
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This dissertation focuses on the material culture associated with the African-Brazilian religion Candombl?, both within the sacred spaces used for religious practice and in the secularized realm of public art. Through an exploration of... more
This dissertation focuses on the material culture associated with the African-Brazilian religion Candombl?, both within the sacred spaces used for religious practice and in the secularized realm of public art. Through an exploration of art works, this research examines the ways ...
Head mounted displays (HMDs) can provide users with an immersive virtual reality (VR) experience, but often are limited to viewing a single environment / data set at a time. In this position paper, we argue that co-located users in the... more
Head mounted displays (HMDs) can provide users with an immersive virtual reality (VR) experience, but often are limited to viewing a single environment / data set at a time. In this position paper, we argue that co-located users in the real world can help provide additional context and steer virtual experiences. With the use of a separate canvas, such as a large-scale display wall, non-immersed users can view a multitude of contextual information. This information can be used to drive the VR user's interactions and lead to deeper understanding. We will highlight two digital humanities use cases that capture real locations using a 360°camera: 1) urban art and 2) urban community gardens. In both cases, HMDs allow users to view a space and its surroundings, while non-immersed users can help with tasks such as placing overlays with auxiliary information, navigating between related spaces, and directing the VR user's actions.
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This presentation introduces the collaborative, interdisciplinary methodologies and analytical framework used in the Urban Art, Landscape, and St. Paul Community Stories Project. With this project, an interdisciplinary team of nine... more
This presentation introduces the collaborative, interdisciplinary methodologies and analytical framework used in the Urban Art, Landscape, and St. Paul Community Stories Project. With this project, an interdisciplinary team of nine undergraduate students and three faculty members from the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota, USA) combines insights from art history, ethnographic research, and spatial analysis in order to examine art and the concept of public space, street art's potential to activate community identity, and sanctioned and unsanctioned art as a response to gentrification in the Midway neighborhood of Saint Paul, Minnesota. Historically considered an affordable area of working-class homes, recent economic development has caused change and greater instability in this neighborhood. With growing racial and ethnic diversity and the beginning hints of gentrification, the Midway neighborhood in Saint Paul a key site for counterhegemonic artistic expression and resistance. Our team is actively surveying and documenting all forms of street art in Midway (including tags, stickers, murals, etc.). The result is a spatial database that allows us to map the location and extent of street art and analyze the interconnected nature of these various forms of artistic expression.
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PROJECT GOALS: The Urban Art Mapping George Floyd and Anti-Racist Street Art database seeks to document examples of street art from around the world that have emerged in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd as part of an ongoing... more
PROJECT GOALS: The Urban Art Mapping George Floyd and Anti-Racist Street Art database seeks to document examples of street art from around the world that have emerged in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd as part of an ongoing movement demanding social justice and equality. Beyond serving as a repository for urban art, the database is created as a resource for students, activists, scholars and artists by way of metadata including a description of key themes, geolocations, and dates of documentation. To this end, the project will make possible an analysis of the text, iconography, and issues that appear in street art on a global scale, explored in relation to local experiences, responses, and attitudes. This is an interdisciplinary project that draws on the methodologies of art history, communication studies, political science, cultural studies, spatial analysis, and more. Ultimately the database intends to serve as a resource for anti-racist teaching and action for now and into the future.
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Manuscript for publication in Tijen Tunali, ed. Art and Gentrification in the Changing Neoliberal Landscape (anticipated December 2020).
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This Special Issue of Open Cultural Studies 3(1) explores spaces where identifications with the African diaspora become articulated, (re)negotiated and, as demonstrated by many articles in this issue, established as a field of the... more
This Special Issue of Open Cultural Studies 3(1) explores spaces where identifications with the African diaspora become articulated, (re)negotiated and, as demonstrated by many articles in this issue, established as a field of the collective agency with transformative power in European societies. The Special Issue includes 15 articles by authors Paul Gilroy, Pamela Ohene-Nyako, Gladys Akom Ankobrey, Serena Scrabello & Marleen de Witte, Giuseppe Grimaldi, Julia Borst & Danae Gallo Gonzalez, Mitchell Esajas & Jéssica de Abreu, Mischa Twitchin, Heather Shirey, Jamele Watkins, Livia Jiménez Sedano, Alice Aterianus-Owanga, Antti-Ville Kärjä and Jasmine Linnea Kelekay.
The articles discuss the ways in which African diaspora communities and cultures in Europe are constructed not only by individuals' engagements in Africa and its global diaspora but also through the collective agency, aiming at promoting change in European societies shadowed by the normative whiteness, nationalist discourses and policies, human rights violations and overt racism. Together, the articles make visible the diversity of African and black diasporic spaces in Europe.
The articles discuss the ways in which African diaspora communities and cultures in Europe are constructed not only by individuals' engagements in Africa and its global diaspora but also through the collective agency, aiming at promoting change in European societies shadowed by the normative whiteness, nationalist discourses and policies, human rights violations and overt racism. Together, the articles make visible the diversity of African and black diasporic spaces in Europe.