Newark Campus hosts Africana philosophy conference
Archived article from Oct 6, 2003
By Douglas Frank
An annual conference on philosophy and the black experience, a field which is a “canon in the making,” according to Assistant Professor Anna Stubblefield, will draw dozens of scholars to Rutgers–Newark to discuss “Philosophy Born of Struggle” Oct. 24-25. The conference, celebrating its 10th year and coming to the Newark campus for the first time, will bring philosophers from New Jersey and around the world who are concerned with issues of race, together with members of the Rutgers and Newark communities. The conference, free and open to the public, will be held in the Robeson Campus Center.
Stubblefield, who is among a growing number of philosophers linking Western philosophical traditions to the black experience, says the conference and the host communities are an ideal mix.
“With its diverse student body and strong support for scholarship on issues of race, the campus is the perfect host institution and the community of Newark, with its history of continued activism in the struggle for social justice, is the perfect community setting,” added Stubblefield, who teaches an undergraduate course in “Philosophy and the Black Experience” on the Newark campus.
“There is a tremendous amount of significant work on issues of race, in history, sociology, the law school, all over the campus,” she said. “It’s a very fertile community for this kind of interdisciplinary pursuit.”
The keynote address will be delivered by Cornel West, university professor of religion at Princeton University and author of 14 books, including the highly acclaimed “Race Matters.” It will be preceded by a poetry reading by Sonia Sanchez, who is regarded as one of America’s most important poets and social activists. She is a professor emeritus of Temple University.
Other speakers include Maulana Karenga, California State University, creator of the holiday Kwanzaa; Lewis Gordon, Brown University, author of “Existentia Africana; Howard McGary, Rutgers University, author of “Race and Social Justice”; Anita Allen-Castellito, University of Pennsylvania, author of “Uneasy Access”; and Lucius Outlaw, Vanderbilt University, author of “On Race and Philosophy.”
One of the few white scholars in the field of Africana philosophy, Stubblefield is serving as project director of the conference. She is joined in the administration of the event by Leonard Harris, professor of philosophy at Purdue University, and Everet Green, professor of philosophy at Rockland Community College, founders of the conference series. The Rutgers–Newark department of philosophy, with a grant from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, is hosting the event. The program has been held at Rockland Community College in New York, the New School for Social Research and Brown University.
The conference theme is “Rethinking the Intellectual Life,” a reflection on what is involved in being an intellectual engaged in struggle within and without academe, and an examination of the “ways in which resistance is and can be operational in the contemporary world,” according to program director Green.
Stubblefield noted that “philosophers of struggle” of all races recognize the importance of bringing philosophical inquiry to bear on issues of racial justice. These scholars also recognize the value of the knowledge of those outside of academia and hope to enhance the community’s understanding of the role that philosophy should play in public discussions of race and civic life.
In connection with the conference, teachers from Newark schools will participate Oct. 21 in a “Teachers as Scholars” seminar on philosophy and the black experience sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and the Rutgers Institute on Ethnicity, Culture and the Modern Experience.
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