Rice University CAAAS

Congratulations to our 2026 CAAAS Graduates!!!

We are pleased to announce that Devon Betts will join CAAAS as the second Dr. Anthony B. Pinn Postdoctoral Associate, beginning August 1, 2026.

Devon Betts is a PhD candidate in American Studies at the University of Maryland, where he is completing his dissertation, “There’s No Pill for What Ails Us: Paranoia, Power, and the Politics of Prevention,” under the direction of La Marr Jurelle Bruce (expected defense: April 2026). His interdisciplinary research draws on media studies, q***r of color critique, history, and the medical humanities to examine how paranoia shapes health decision-making among Black Americans.
Betts’s work explores topics such as Black women’s skepticism toward prescription birth control, Black q***r men’s mistrust of HIV prevention medications, and broader hesitations around participation in vaccine trials.

Please join us for our CAAAS Speaker Series: Tony Yeboah | April 3, 2026 | 12:00 PM | Sewall Hall 570 -Anthropology Seminar Room

TODAY
Please join us for our CAAAS Speaker Series: Duncan Yoon | 12:00 PM | 119 Humanities Building

Please join us for the Inaugural CAAAS African Diaspora Visiting Scholar: Michel Chagas | TOMORROW | 1:00 PM | Kraft Hall 130

Please join us TODAY: Monday, March 2nd
Meet & Greet with Akosua Darkwah

Brown College - College Magister House (9 Sunset Blvd)
5:30PM to 7:00PM

CAAAS closed out Black History History Month with Natanya Duncan’s talk “To fan a nation’s flame” : Legacies of Efficient Womanhood & it was AMAZING!!

CAAAS has had an amazing start to its Black History Month events! Please email [email protected] to request to join our listserv to stay informed about our upcoming events!

Please join us for the first Spring CAAAS Colloquium featuring Jamal Cyrus and Leslie Hewitt on January 21, 2026, at 12:00 PM in Humanities 117.

The book launch celebrating CAAAS Affiliate Faculty Member Dr. Nana Osei-Opare was a wonderful success.

Book Title: Socialist De-Colony: Black and Soviet Entanglements in Ghana's Cold War (Cambridge, Nov. 2025).

Book Abstract:
Led by the charismatic Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana won its political independence from the United Kingdom in 1957. It precipitated both the dying spiral of colonialism across the African continent and the world's first Black socialist state. Utilising materials from Ghanaian, Russian, English, and American archives, Nana Osei-Opare offers a provocative and new reading of this defining moment in world history through the eyes of workers, writers, students, technical-experts, ministers, and diplomats. Osei-Opare shows how race and Ghana-Soviet spaces influenced, enabled, and disrupted Ghana's transformational socialist, Cold War, and decolonization projects to achieve Black freedom.

You can download it for free.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/socialist-decolony/1AA84C5E74A329109AA7E92798FD2B30