The Center for African and African American Studies is Rice’s primary location for curriculum and research related to Africa and to people of African descent in the Americas and beyond. Offering a broad base for teaching and pedagogical resources as well as interdisciplinary scholarship and programming that brings Rice into national and international conversations, the center is a clearinghouse for critical conversation, instruction, cutting-edge research and community outreach in an interdisciplinary fashion.
A collaboration between the School of Humanities and the School of Social Sciences, the center produces synergies and harnesses collaborative engagement across the university. The center provides a unique hub for conversations on crucial topics: critical approaches to race and racism, the nature of diasporic histories and identities, and the complexity of Africa’s past, present and future, to name a few.
STIGMA POLITICS & POLITICAL RESISTANCE: ADDICTION, OPIOID MEDICAL MAINTENANCE, AND BLACK PUBLIC OPINION 1950-1975

Dr. Samuel K. Roberts
Associate Professor
Department of History (Arts & Sciences) and Sociomedical Sciences (Mailman School of Public Health)
Columbia University
12:00 PM | February 12, 2025 | Fondren Library- Kyle Morrow Room
COMBEE: HARRIET TUBMAN, THE COMBAHEE RIVER RAID, AND BLACK FREEDOM DURING THE CIVIL WAR

Dr. Edda Fields-Black
Professor, Department of History
Director of Humanities Center
Carnegie Mellon University
Author of "COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War" (Oxford University Press, 2024)
6:00 PM | February 20, 2025 | Herring Hall, Room 100
SEPARATE & NONEXISTENT: BLACK SOUTHERNERS AND GRADUATE EDUCATION DURING THE ERA OF LEGAL SEGREGATION

Dr. Crystal Sanders
Associate Professor
Department of African American Studies
Emory University
Author of "A Chance for Change: Head Start and Mississippi’s Black Freedom Struggle" (University of North Carolina Press, 2016)
4:30 PM | February 27, 2025 | Welcome Center Presentation Room
CAAAS and BRIDGE present: An Evening with Ruha Benjamin

WHO OWNS THE FUTURE? FROM ARTIVICIAL INTELLIGENCE TO ABUNDANT IMAGINATION
7:00 PM | March 31, 2025 | McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall
An enthralling storyteller, brilliant scholar, and fierce advocate for all things just, Dr. Ruha Benjamin is the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University where she studies the social dimensions of science, medicine, and technology with a focus on the relationship between innovation and inequity, knowledge and power, race and citizenship, and health and justice.