The Africana Studies and Research Center will host "Looking Back/Moving Forward: The Future of Africana/Black Studies," April 15-17 at the Africana Center, 310 Triphammer Road. Held in celebration of the center's 40th anniversary, the conference will engage scholars in a dialogue to revisit and critically assess the origin and development of the field and new theoretical imperatives.

The field of Africana/black studies has undergone major transformations within the last three decades, largely due to feminist, postmodernist, postcolonial studies and other critical interventions.

A new generation of African and African-American feminist scholars as well as new imperatives -- such as postcolonial, gender or queer perspectives -- have confronted major issues within black communities and have led to the development of a new body of literature and new fields of inquiry. These developments in Africana studies were influenced by transformations in related areas, such as cultural studies and critical race theory.

Other developments are related to explorations of new frontiers in African diaspora studies that include lesser-explored areas such as in the Spanish speaking Caribbean and Latin America, in addition to black British and other European experiences.

The conference will be a platform for discourse concerning the progress of these explorations, as well as contemporary and historical issues within Africana studies.

Panelists include Richard Powell, Farah Jasmine Griffin, John Akomfrah and Ron Walters. For a list of panelists and the conference schedule, visit http://asrc.cornell.edu/asrc@40.