An Energetic Vision Takes Root

Winter 2025
Interview by Lynn Gosnell

In 2019, Rice launched the Center for African and African American Studies, a collaboration between the School of Humanities and the School of Social Sciences, with the mission to be a home for critical conversation, innovative research, learning and community engagement. On Jan. 1, 2024, Sherwin K. Bryant — a distinguished scholar of slavery, race and the early modern African diaspora — took the helm. 

Bryant brings a wealth of relevant experience to Rice — most recently as an associate professor of Black studies and history at Northwestern University, where he also served as director of the Center for African American History and co-director of the Andean Cultures and Histories working group in the Weinberg College Center for International and Area Studies. 

Under Bryant’s leadership, Rice’s CAAAS is advancing the understanding of African and African American history and culture while growing its capacity for research and teaching, curating dynamic programs and increasing collaboration on campus and beyond. 

What were your priorities when you arrived at Rice?

One of the first things was to develop a Black History Month lecture series. It was important to me to hold that lecture series off campus, specifically to let the community know that we’re here, and we’re invested. Our BHM kickoff lecture was held at the African American History Research Center at the Gregory School in Freedmen’s Town. The Houston Museum of African American Culture was another lecture site. That’s the kind of outreach we’ve been able to nurture. 

What are some highlights of CAAAS’ faculty growth?

The center has hired nine faculty members who have tenure-line homes in departments within the schools of social sciences and humanities. That has spurred a great deal of innovation in undergraduate curricula and supports our minor. On the graduate level, we’re increasing courses to augment departmental offerings and support our Ph.D. certificate. 

This past spring, there were more than a dozen courses listed or cross-listed under the African and African American studies area. One experiential course, Journey Towards Justice: Black Liberation and the Civil Rights Movement, was taught by sociologist Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman, an outstanding scholar of racial justice and social inequality, who joined our faculty this academic year. This class includes a field trip to historic sites of the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama.

We’ve welcomed Ayodeji Olugbuyiro, the inaugural Dr. Anthony B. Pinn Postdoctoral Associate, to the center. His research revolves around the formation of Black identities within the Luso-Afro-Brazilian Atlantic, a region encompassing countries like Brazil, Portugal, Angola and Mozambique. He’s bringing this scholarship to the classroom in the seminar Dynamics of Empire: Portuguese, African and Brazilian Interconnections. 

Anthropologist Khadene Harris is a historical archaeologist whose research focuses on plantation societies in the Caribbean. She’s teaching courses this spring on the archaeology of the African diaspora for graduates and undergraduates and supervising anthropology capstone and honors research projects, along with other department engagements.  

How does having two academic homes — the School of Humanities and the School of Social Sciences — benefit CAAAS?

It offers an opportunity to advance research that’s truly interdisciplinary — and allows us to think about how we might engage with other Rice schools. So, if we’re thinking about the built environment and environmental justice, we can have conversations with architecture and engineering. If we’re thinking about the socioeconomic realities of Black life in global cities like Houston as well as the importance of studying practices of entrepreneurship, banking and finance in the broader African diaspora across the Americas, we can engage faculty in business and social sciences. The arts are another big part of what we want to think about as we’re thinking about history, research and practices. We will have an artist in residence at CAAAS beginning in the 2025–2026 academic year. I’m a music lover myself, and having the Shepherd School of Music here and the amazing opera house, it opens up a range of rich opportunities to curate programs — who knows what ideas will germinate? 

As a research hub, CAAAS is front and center in Rice’s plans for strategic growth. How will our new strategic plan inform the center’s work? 

Part of the strategic plan is a globalizing ethos. CAAAS has many faculty members whose work addresses Latin America and the Caribbean — people of African descent in Latin America and the Hispanic Caribbean. We will be formalizing more partnerships with universities and scholars in Latin America — in particular, in Colombia and Brazil, initially. We’re inaugurating a visiting scholar of African and African diaspora studies, who will join us this spring from Brazil.  

  As we think about what it means to advance a strategic mission toward thriving urban communities, CAAAS is committed to studying the history of Black Houston. And we want to be in dialogue with efforts to advance this research, support it and incubate it here. We’ve developed relationships and formalized a partnership with the Emancipation Park Conservancy, for example, and worked on a Juneteenth program about the legacies of emancipation in Black Houston’s history.  

We also think about the intersection of art and race in a place like Houston, in dialog with places like Texas Southern University and the work of John Biggers there, among others, as well as Project Row Houses. These are all important sites and laboratories for the kind of thinking that we’re doing. 

What are you looking forward to in this spring’s semester?

We are now a co-sponsor of the annual Black Houston(s) Symposium, directed by Portia Hopkins, Rice’s university historian. We want to be in dialog with efforts to advance this research, support it and incubate that here. There are a range of Digital Humanities projects that have been started at Rice, and we are interested and invested in expanding upon those and in supporting their completion.  

We’re also in dialogue with Rice Cinema to bring forward a number of documentaries. We’ve had an ongoing lecture series this year that looks at future directions of African and African American studies, bringing leading scholars to campus to present their research. Our new book series features the work of emerging scholars who publish in the area of African and African American studies.

These activities take support, we know. How are CAAAS’ staff resources growing?

Erika Thompson, our new associate director, brings a wealth of experience to Rice from her work as community liaison at the African American History Research Center at the Gregory School. She’s an archivist with a background in Africana studies and is a thought leader who also helped us to think in very concrete ways about reaching out and engaging the community. Canecia Smith, the center’s administrator, comes to us from the George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing. Between the two of them, we’ve been able to increase our activities at a dizzying pace.  

Sherwin K. Bryant is director of the Center for African and African American Studies and associate professor in the Department of History in the School of Humanities.Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman is associate professor of sociology. Khadene Harris is assistant professor of anthropology. Both are in the School of Social Sciences.