Sunday, November 15: 2:00 pm

Who has the authority to tell another culture’s history? Melville J. Herskovits, a second-generation Jewish-American, redefined the way the world understands African-American history. At a time when eugenics dominated the study of race, Herskovits examined the roots of African American culture in Africa, hoping the uncovering of cultural links would improve the black American self-image. Combining his field films made in Nigeria, Dahomey, Mali, and elsewhere with key moments in anthropological and civil rights history, as well as interviews with current-day scholars, Herskovits demonstrates the nuances of identity politics involved in anthropological study. Who has access to the archives? Who gets their research funded? Who is objective and who is self-interested? When Herskovits, founder of the white-dominated African Studies Association, clashes with prominent black intellectual elites, including W.E.B. Du Bois and sociologist E. Franklin Frazier, the conflict calls into question all we know about each other.

The filmmaker will be in discussion with Jerry Gershenhorn, a professor at North Carolina Central University and author of Melville J. Herskovits and the Racial Politics of Knowledge.