Spirit and the African American Experience

Our 3:30 - 4:45 PM - “Betting on Hope” session is being rescheduled

Stay tuned for an upcoming CSRC-ARC program on Oral Histories + the Museum, featuring

curators, historians, artists, and activists working on representation in the public sphere of

the museum. This program will mark the closing weeks of the JELMA exhibition “Betting

on Hope”

The Benjamin A. Quarles Humanities and Social Science Institute, the African American and African Diaspora Studies Program, and The Center for the Study of Religion and the City at Morgan State University invite you to join our 2021 conference, “Spirit and the African American Experience,” to be held on October 28-29.

The notion of ‘spirit’ and the experience of African Americans in the present moment not only captures the historic confrontation with catastrophe that has been a fixture of the Black experience but also glimpses the perennial summoning of the will to be and what philosopher Cornel West has called “Black fightback” in spite of the grim realities of racism and disease. However, spirit, like the Black experience, is also elusive and not reducible to one understanding.

It is in light of the present moment and the multifaceted and interdisciplinary focus that we invite conversations on how the humanities can help us form nuanced and critical understandings of our zeitgeist, the spirit of the times.

For questions or assistance, please email: msu-spirit-conference@morgan.edu