Black Canadian Studies

“Urban Gentrification: White Futures, Black Dystopias”: Humanities professor Andrea Davis is one of four speakers at the York Circle Lecture & Lunch Series on Saturday, February 29, 2020.

This talk offers a discussion of the competing goals of urban gentrification through a reading of the documentary film Unarmed Verses (2016). The film follows the life of 12-year-old Francine Valentine for several months in 2016 as her family prepares for forced relocation from their North York, Toronto community of Villaways, targeted for demolition by a city […]

Word, Sound, Power: Black Artistic Expression

The event, “Word, Sound, Power,” on Wednesday, February 12, 2020, featured performances by student artists, many of whom are in the Black Canadian Studies Certificate.  The evening included musical performances by an R&B Ensemble under the direction of Mike Cado, an all-female jazz ensemble under the direction of Kevin Turcotte, and the York Gospel Choir […]

Fragments of Memory Exhibition: Artistic Representations of Diaspora Lives

Fragments of Memory, an exciting and challenging new exhibit of storytelling and recovered memory of the African diasporas, will officially launch on Tuesday, Oct. 8 from 3 to 5 p.m. in 305 Founders College, Keele Campus. In the exhibit, Brazilian artist Pablo Parra represents the biographies and testimonies of five individuals of the African diaspora […]

Graduate with a Degree and a Certificate

Are you a York student looking to enhance your degree? Are you unsure what electives to select for your major? Are you looking to get hands-on field work experience before you graduate? Have you graduated and want to upgrade your skills or knowledge? If you answered, yes, to any of these questions then the Black […]

Black Poetry Recitation Contest

Black Poetry Recitation Contest - York U (PDF) The Black Poetry Recitation Contest is a poetry recitation contest for students in Grades 9 – 12 attending high schools in the Greater Toronto Area. Registration is free and open to all students. How does the Contest Work? Student contestants choose and learn to recite poems from […]

Author Saidiya Hartman presented a talk at York University on April 5 during a launch event for her new book Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval

Author Saidiya Hartman presented a talk at York University on April 5 during a launch event for her new book Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval. The event was presented by the Department of Humanities, Social & Political Thought, the Department of Visual Art & Art History and the LA&PS Research Events Fund, […]

Focus groups on Black youth experience expose failures of multicultural policy

  Imagine having your university classmates assume that you sell illegal drugs in between classes, missing out on job opportunities solely due to your home address or having a beverage thrown at you from a moving car. These are the searing experiences of Black youth recounted in a research paper by Faculty of Liberal Arts […]

Students from Jane and Finch find a fresh perspective at York University

It would take more than a winter storm to keep a group of enthusiastic students from Westview Centennial Secondary School from attending class. The Grade 9 through 12 students travelled from Toronto’s Jane and Finch neighbourhood during the Feb. 27 snowstorm to audit a lecture in the humanities called “Cultures of Resistance in the Americas: […]

Black Activists: Quiet and Gentle Canadians?

In 1971, the Yale professor Robin Winks wrote that Black Canadians wanted “nothing more than to be accepted as quiet Canadians.” In The Blacks in Canada, Winks claimed that Black Canadians were “unlikely to organize militant, noisy, pushy protests.” He considered Daniel Hill, the first full-time director of the Ontario Human Rights Commission in 1962, […]

York University music Professor Rob Bowman receives Grammy nomination for Best Historical Album

York University’s famous “rock ‘n’ roll professor,” Rob Bowman, has been nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Historical Album category as co-producer of the Numero Group’s 2017 two-disc compilation Jackie Shane: Any Other Way. Read full story on YFile Rob Bowman teaches FA/MUSI 3510 3.0 African-American Popular Music, one of the Certificate courses.  He […]