JUALYNNE DODSON AND THE AFRICAN ATLANTIC RESEARCH TEAM

Professor Jualynne E. Dodson (photo right) directs the African Atlantic Research Team of MSU's Sociology Department. For the 2008 calendar year, the team continued its excellence in academics research, writing, and professional presentations. Some important milestones included:

• The publishing of the team’s first volume of creative works, Diaspora Visions: Global Perspectives from the African Atlantic Research Team School of New World Thought”. 

• Production and publication of the second issue Reconexiónes, newsletter.

• Publication of Sacred Spaces and Religious Traditions in Oriente Cuba, by director Jualynne E. Dodson.  This full exploration of Cuban religions as practiced in the eastern region of the island has been ten years in research, verification, and writing and is published by the University of New Mexico Press.

• Dodson also delivered three lectures at the University of Va¨xjö Sweden: “African Americans & Race In The U.S: Antecedents to U.S. Modern Civil Rights Movement, 1896 to 1964”; “Spiritual Work In Oriente: Political Economy Of Religion & Tourism”; and “The African Atlantic Research Team: A Visual Journey Through Western Cuba.”

• Student team members presented research papers on the panel entitled “Religion and Identity in the Caribbean” during the 1st Annual Afro-Latin Cross Disciplinary Conference in Accra, Ghana.  The conference theme was “Ways Of Being: Afro-Hispanic Culture” and AART members represented MSU with ‘flying colors.’

Other Achievements:

• Team member Blair Starnes was Fulbright Fellow and studied at the University of KwaZulu Natal in Durban, South Africa.  This MSU graduate student also participated in an archeological dig for plantation artifacts in Long Island New York.

• Marshall Scholar Shanti Zaid, received a Master of Arts degree in Social Anthropology from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, UK and is working on a second.