Wellesley, Massachusetts – Members of the public are invited to attend a day-long symposium honoring the work of Selwyn R. Cudjoe, who is retiring after nearly 40 years as a member of Wellesley’s Africana studies faculty.
To be held Saturday, April 20, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Collins Cinema, the symposium will celebrate Professor Cudjoe’s academic career and impact as a Caribbean African American scholar. The event is open to members of the public at no charge and will be live streamed on WellesleyLive.
A well known scholar of Caribbean literature and Caribbean intellectual history, Selwyn Cudjoe is professor of Africana studies and Margaret E. Deffenbaugh and LeRoy T. Carlson Professor in Comparative Literature at Wellesley. From 1995 to 1999, he was the college’s fourth Marion Butler McLean Chair in the History of Ideas. A member of the Wellesley faculty since 1986, he has taught courses on the African American literary tradition, African literature, black women writers and Caribbean literature. He also has written for a number of important media outlets, including The New York Times, the Washington Post and the International Tribune. In 2021, he received Wellesley’s Pinanski Teaching Prize, awarded annually to honor fine teaching. His full biography is online.
Participants at this weekend’s symposium will include faculty members from Wellesley’s Africana studies and English departments, Wellesley alums, and prominent scholars from other institutions.
Special guests include:
- Carole Boyce Davies, professor of Africana Studies and Literatures in English at Cornell University
- Adekeye Adebajo, senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship
- Hilary Beckles, vice-chancellor at the University of the West Indies
- Crystal Fleming, a 2004 Wellesley graduate and professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University
- Biodun Jeyifo, emeritus professor of African and African American Studies and of Comparative Literature at Harvard University.