CBH Talk | Africa Reframed: Rethinking a Continent’s History

To expand on DanceAfrica’s celebration of the vibrant musical and cultural tradition of Africa and its diaspora, BAM welcomes the Center for Brooklyn History to examine the positioning of the continent within the story of our modern world. Join CBH for a conversation that confronts historical distortion and misrepresentation of African history, and celebrates ground-breaking intellectual contributions, reflecting on the question: how has this history been told, and by whom?

Acclaimed journalist and author Howard W. French draws on the revisionist arguments of his book Born in Blackness, which repositions Africa at the center of the modern world’s formation. Yale professor Dan Magaziner reflects on Africa as a center of intellectual production, in particular thinking about nationhood and independence. In dialogue with Lovia Gyarkye, editor at Hammer & Hope and a leading voice on Black culture and politics, they will explore the continent’s foundational role in the rise of the modern global economy and contemporary political and intellectual thought, the ways that role has been obscured, and how revisiting that history challenges long-standing Eurocentric perspectives.