Ethical Student Travel in the Africana World

Coming on the heels of the MMUF Distinguished Lecture with Dr. Christopher Loprena, join Neriko Doerr and Devin Walker for a lunchtime conversation on the politics, challenges, and best practices associated with crafting ethical student travel experiences for the 21st century.

This event is hosted by BCRW’s Africana Routes, Africana Migrations faculty working group convened by Abosede George and Tamara J. Walker, who will also be moderating the conversation. For the past two years, the group has been creating spaces for knowledge sharing on the intersections of gender, race, travel, ethics, and institutional practice across the Barnard community and with external participants. Building on Doerr’s prescriptions in Transforming Study Abroad: A Handbook and Walker’s critical observations in Historically Underrepresented Faculty and Students in Education Abroad: Wandering Where we Belong, George and Walker are advancing towards a framework that interrogates and improves existing modes of international engagement within the curriculum and beyond.

Lunch will be provided. The event is free and open to the public. Registration is required.

Speakers

Neriko Musha Doerr received a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Cornell University. Her research interests include politics of difference, language and power, automobility, civic engagement, and education, specifically study abroad and language education in the United States, Japan, and Aotearoa/New Zealand. Her publications include The Native Speaker Concept: Ethnographic Investigations of "Native Speaker Effects" (Mouton de Gruyter), The Romance of Crossing Borders: Studying and Volunteering Abroad (Berghahn), Transforming Study Abroad: A Handbook (Berghahn), The Global Education Effect and Japan: Constructing New Borders and Identification Practices (Routledge), Fairies, Ghosts, and Santa Claus: Tinted Glasses, Fetishes, and the Politics of Seeing (Berghahn), Post Unit-Thinking Pedagogies: Teaching to Live beyond Categories (Springer), and The Paradox of Difference: Moving beyond Border Crossing, Translanguaging, and Unit Thinking (Berghahn) and articles in various peer-reviewed journals, such as Anthropology and Education Quarterly, Frontieres: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, and Intercultural Education, She currently teaches at Ramapo College in New Jersey.

Abosede George is the Tow Associate Professor of History at Barnard College. She teaches courses on African migrations, urban history, childhood and youth, and women, gender, and sexuality in African History. A native of Lagos, Nigeria, and a self-identified life-long migrant, she has lived in Zaire, Mali, the United States, and The Netherlands, and she has traveled as an African woman through five of the seven continents. Her articles have appeared in the American Historical Review, the Journal of Social History, Meridians, and The Washington Post among other publications. Her prize-winning book, Making Modern Girls: A History of Girlhood, Labor, and Social Development, was published in 2014 by Ohio University Press. She is currently working on a history of free Black migration from various parts of the African diaspora to Lagos, West Africa across the nineteenth century. Follow The Ekopolitan Project on FB, IG, or Twitter to learn more.

Devin Walker serves as the Dean of Student Equity and Success at Cabrillo College. Devin earned his BA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his MA and Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction at The University of Texas at Austin in 2018. His research focused on the intersection of race, sports, and education as well as the influence of global education on student’s self-concept, national identity and future orientation. Prior to leaving Texas in 2023, he served as the director of two high-impact centers for the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement at UT- Austin: The Heman Sweatt Center for Black Males as well as Global Leadership and Social Impact. Devin has personally led over 600 students on study abroad programs to China, South Africa, the UAE, Ghana and Senegal. His published book, Historically Underrepresented Faculty and Students in Education Abroad: Wandering Where We Belong, offers a roadmap for institutions to effectively engage Black and Brown students in education abroad. In addition to his academic pursuits, he is a co-founder of the Black Student-Athlete Summit and the founder and CEO of The WorldWalker Foundation, a 501c3 focused on providing transformational education abroad opportunities for Black students.

Tamara J. Walker is Claire Tow Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Barnard College. She is the author of Exquisite Slaves: Race, Clothing, and Status in Colonial Lima, which was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017 and won the 2018 Harriet Tubman Prize from the Schomburg Center for Research on Black Culture. Her most recent book, Beyond the Shores: A History of African Americans Abroad (Crown, June 2023), was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. She is currently at work on two new research projects, one focused on race and visual culture in Latin America (under contract, University of Texas Press), and the other on the interconnected history of slavery and piracy. Her teaching covers these diverse thematic areas as well, and she offers courses on topics such as Afro-Latin American Art, Afro-Latin American History and Culture, Slavery & Freedom in Latin America, and Black Americans Abroad. She teaches on Afro-Latin American history, art, and Black internationalism. Tamara is also the co-founder of The Wandering Scholar, a nonprofit expanding access to global travel for underrepresented students. The organization also produces multi-media content embodying their vision of engaged, globally-minded citizenship, including the newsletter Postcards and the podcast Why We Wander.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Barnard Center for Research on Women