Featured Speaker: Ajuan Mance, Art/Comics/Illustration
Join us for a celebration of Black History Month as we honor, recognize, affirm, and acknowledge the history that has created space for Black creatives to thrive.
We invite you to attend all of the events listed below, including our featured speaker, Ajuan Mance, taking place on Thursday, February 15, 11:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m. (ZOOM ID: 960 1200 2336). RSVP here. Ajuan Mance will share how a decade of illustration projects and collaborations have shaped and transformed her understanding of the role of the Black artist and, alongside it, the nature of the work that the artist creates. Ajuan will use images from her recent illustrated book projects, as well as recent and unpublished portrait and animation projects to consider the important ways that art can challenge and transform how a people, place, or community is seen and, in so doing, transform and disrupt the society that seeks to define or confine it.
ARTIST BIO:
Ajuan Mance is an artist and writer based in Oakland, California. She is a Professor of English at Mills College and a Visiting Professor of Illustration at the California College of the Arts. In both her scholarly writing and her illustrated work, Ajuan explores the complexities of race, gender, and power in the 21st century. Ajuan’s comics have appeared in several anthologies, including the award-winning collections We’re Still Here, Drawing Power, and Menopause: A Comic Treatment, COVID Chronicles, We Belong: An All-Black, All-Queer Sci-Fi and Fantasy Comics Anthology. Ajuan is also the author and illustrator of the portrait collections 1001 Black Men: Portraits of Masculinity at the Intersections and Living While Black: Portraits of Everyday Resistance, as well as the children’s picture book What Do Brothas Do All Day.
FILM IN THE FORUM FEATURING, SOUL | 6:00PM-9:00PM| 
BIPOC STUDENT SUMMIT| 9:00AM-4:30PM | 