By Gail Hairston

 

This spring’s Anthropology Colloquium/Inclusive Excellence Decolonizing the Academy Lecture is “Yo Amo Mi Pajón: Afro-Dominicanness and the Natural Hair Movement in the Dominican Republic and Beyond” presented by Kimberly Eison Simmons, associate professor of anthropology and African American studies and associate dean of the South Carolina Honors College at the University of South Carolina.

 

Simmons will speak at 5 p.m. today (Monday), April 3, in Room 118 White Hall Classroom Building on the University of Kentucky campus.

 

A reserved luncheon is slated with Simmons as the special guest with UK faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate students from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday, in the Alumni Gallery of the William T. Young Library.

 

Immediately after Simmons’ lecture, there will be a dinner reception in the lobby just outside Room 118 White Hall Classroom Building to enable conversations to continue.

 

Simmons’ research focuses on women’s organizations, Afro-Dominicanness, African-American culture and experience, and the cultural construction of identity in the African diaspora. She was co-editor of “Reconstructing Racial Identity and the African Past in the Dominican Republic and Afrodescendants, Identity, and the Struggle for Development in the Americas.”

 

Simmons’ visit is supported by a UK Inclusive Excellence Student Program Grant; the Department of Anthropology; Coalition of Anthropology Students of Color; Center for Graduate and Professional Diversity Initiatives; the College of Arts and Sciences’ African American and Africana Studies Program and Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies Program; the Hispanic Studies Graduate Student Association; UK International Center; UK Black Graduate and Professional Student Association; UK Center for Equality and Social Justice; Biology Graduate Student Association; Geography Graduate Student Union; Latino Student Union; Anthropology Graduate Student Association; and the Undergraduate Anthropology Club.

 

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