Abdias Nascimento Celebrated at African Studies Center’s 65th Anniversary - Honoring a Legacy of Black Activism and Thought
By Leonora Souza Paula*
The African Studies Center (ASC) at Michigan State University (MSU), a leading institution for African studies in the United States and globally, marks its 65th anniversary with a yearlong celebration featuring events highlighting the global reach of Black activism and thought. Among the honorees is Abdias Nascimento, the renowned dramatist, professor, visual artist, activist, and author whose contributions to Black consciousness and transnational dialogues on race continue to shape discourse worldwide.
Diasporic Engagement
One of the highlights of the celebration was a lecture delivered by Eliza Larkin Nascimento, co-founder and director of the Afro-Brazilian Studies and Research Institute (IPEAFRO). Her talk focused on the life and legacy of Abdias Nascimento and the significance of diasporic engagement in shaping his art and activism. She underscored Abdias’s multidisciplinary impact on Brazilian theater, Black political organizing, and transnational dialogues on self-determination for peoples of African descent. His work, she emphasized, embodies a rich archive of diasporic epistemology that remains a global reference for liberation movements.
Exploring the African Diaspora Research Project
During her visit, Nascimento also explored materials from the African Diaspora Research Project Special Collection, a significant archival initiative at MSU. The African Diaspora Research Project (1987-2003) was created by MSU sociology professor Ruth Simms Hamilton, who played a pivotal role in recruiting and mentoring graduate students in the field of African Diaspora Studies. Hamilton also edited the Conexões newsletter (1987-1994), which focused on the cultural and geographical connections between Africa and its global diaspora. Hamilton’s work laid the groundwork for a number of studies about the complex transnational exchanges that have defined Black intellectual and artistic movements. By exploring the archive, Nascimento highlighted the dynamic connections between Black intellectuals based in Latin American and Africa as well as American scholars, a crucial movement for consolidating the now established field of Diaspora Studies.
As Nascimento noted, the Research Project was remarkably successful in inviting key figures to campus, including representatives from Brazil. One particularly important scholar was Luiza Bairros, who served as the Minister of Brazil's Secretariat for the Promotion of Racial Equality from 2011 to 2014 and co-authored UNESCO's General History of Africa. Bairros conducted her doctoral research in sociology at Michigan State University from 1994 to 1997, under the guidance of Hamilton.
Celebrating Abdias Nascimento’s Artistic Contributions
Abdias Nascimento’s artistic and intellectual contributions were further recognized in the exhibition Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica at the Art Institute of Chicago Dec 24-Mar 25. The multimedia exhibition focused on Pan-Africanist thinkers and their profound influence on global art and culture over the past century. Curator Antawan I. Byrd noted that as “a show centered on the circulation of ideas,” the various meanings of Pan-Africanism are meant to be understood by mapping the hemispheric routes and transits that have forged paths of memory toward a future of interconnectedness.
Quilombismo and Black Diaspora Thought
A central theme of the exhibition was Abdias’ theory of Quilombismo. The curators positioned Quilombismo as one of the most influential 20th-century movements, recognizing its role in imagining an emancipatory future across global Black communities. By conceptualizing part of the exhibition through the lens of Quilombismo, the organizers underscored Nascimento’s central role in shaping contemporary Black intellectual and cultural landscapes, which extends across various traditions and territories in a continuous process of reinvention.
Looking Ahead: Pan-Amefricanism
As we celebrate the 111th anniversary of Abdias Nascimento's birth on March 14, new approaches to his work continue to emerge. This is effectively illustrated by the new conceptual framework of Pan-Amefricanism developed by MASP curator Amanda Carneiro. In dialogue with Lélia Gonzalez's concept of Amefricanity, which emphasizes the Afro-Indigenous constitution of the Americas and the Pan-African repertoire of ideas, Pan-Amefricanism acknowledges the anticolonial and decolonial principles present in Abdias's extensive intellectual contributions. In this context, Carneiro’s Pan-Amefricanism repositions Abdias as a central figure in contemporary discussions regarding hemispheric approaches to Blackness and the evolving discourse surrounding the interconnected geographies and epistemologies of the diaspora.
*Leonora Souza Paula is Assistant Professor of Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University. Her current research examines the role of Black spatial imagination in claiming literature and culture as a form of heritage preservation and epistemic reparation. Leonora is a Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, the Research Institute for Structural Change, the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, and Vital Voices Global Partnership.
This article was written for issue 158 of the WBO newsletter, dated March 21, 2025. To subscribe and receive free weekly news and analysis like this, simply enter your email in the field provided.
