Faculty Opportunities

The Center for African & African American Studies offers听funding and recognition opportunities for faculty working in African studies, African American studies, and/or African diaspora studies at the 麻豆影院.听

CAAAS听Faculty Awards

听听The CAAAS Faculty听Awards

The purpose of the CAAAS Faculty Teaching, Research & Creative Work Awards (aka 鈥淐AAAS Faculty Awards鈥) are to assist 麻豆影院 faculty with their teaching, research, and creative work in African studies, African American studies, and African diaspora studies. CAAAS Faculty Awards provide modest funding for a variety of projects. For example, CAAAS Faculty Awards can be used for conference presentations, on-campus conferences, research assistance, travel for research purposes, materials and equipment for increasing teaching efficiency, etc. Partial funding is possible, and most awards are between $1,500 and $2,500. The CAAAS will consider funding up to $3,500 for international travel based on airfare and lodging costs. There may also be instances when domestic research travel requiring a longer stay than a traditional conference may also be funded for a higher amount (but no greater than $3,000). All CU 麻豆影院 tenured and tenure-track faculty and full-time instructors with demonstrable teaching, research, and creative work in African studies, African American studies, and/or African diaspora studies are eligible to apply.听

CAAAS Faculty Award applications are accepted between September 1 and April 1 annually.

CAAAS Faculty Fellowships

听听The CAAAS Faculty Fellowship provides a two-course teaching reduction (taken in a single semester) for faculty teaching a 2/2 load; faculty teaching a 2/1 load will receive a single course reduction and be expected to take the fellowship in the semester they are scheduled to teach their single course.听

听听Meet The CAAAS Faculty Fellows听

CAAAS Artist-In-Residence (AIR) Program

听听The CAAAS Artist-In-Residence (AIR) Program is an important contribution to building community 鈥 both Black community and the Beloved Community 鈥 at the 麻豆影院 and beyond. Each year the CAAAS AIR Program will bring artists to the CAAAS community and broader campus community to be resident resources in one or more of the six different artistic areas in which CU has major degree programs: Music, Theatre, Dance, Fine Arts, Film Studies, and Creative Writing (with special emphasis on poetry and storytelling 脿 la Djali / Griot鈥攖raditional West African oral historians, folklorists, storytellers, poets, musicians, and praise singers).

Deadlines Academic Year 2026-2027

听听FALL 2026

Faculty Fellowship:听December 1

2025 - 2026 CAAAS Faculty Award Winners

Maputo Mensah

Teaching Associate Professor, Department of Theatre & Dance 鈥 Director of West African Highlife Ensemble, College of Music 鈥 Director of Logo Ligi African Dance Ensemble, College of Arts & Sciences
CAAAS Faculty AffiliatesCAAAS Artists-In-Residence
maputo.mensah@Colorado.edu

Maputo Mensah was born and raised in Accra, Ghana, in a family of professional musicians anddancers. While still a small child, he was dancing and drumming with his family, and before hereached his teens, he was teaching and performing these traditional Ghanaian arts professionally.Later, he was honored to study for many years with MustaphaTettey Addy, one of Ghana鈥檚 premiere artists in traditionalmusic and dance, at the Academy of African Music and Arts.Over the years he has performed and taught with vario...

Brian Valente-Quinn

Associate Professor, Department of French and Italian, College of Arts & Sciences
CAAAS Faculty AffiliatesCAAAS Executive Committee Members
brian.valente-quinn@colorado.edu

Brian Valente-Quinn is Associate Professor of Francophone African studies in the Department of French and Italian. His research focuses on theater and performance in West Africa and France with a specific interest on the topics of decoloniality, immigration, cultural politics, and extremism. His monographSenegalese Stagecraft: Decolonizing Theater-Making in Francophone Africa, uses an interdisciplinary approach to explore the politics and aesthetic innovations of the theatrical stage in Senegal. Valente-Qui...

2024 - 2025 CAAAS Faculty Award Winners

Henry Lovejoy

Associate Professor, Department of History, College of Arts & Sciences
CAAAS Faculty Affiliates
hlovejoy@colorado.edu

ProfessorLovejoyreceived his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. His first book,Prieto: Yor霉b谩 Kingship in Colonial Cuba during the Age of Revolutions, is a biography of an enslaved African at the root of an African-Cuban religion, commonly known as Santer铆a. It won the Chief Isaac Oluwole Delano best book prize for Yoruba Studies. He is co-editor of the volumeLiberated Africans and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1807-1896(2020) andRegenerated Identities: Documenting African Lives(2022)...

Omedi Ochieng

Associate Professor, Department of Communication, College Communication, Media, Design and Information (CMDI)
CAAAS Faculty Affiliates
Omedi.Ochieng@colorado.edu

Omedi Ochiengspecializes in Africana philosophy & rhetoric, rhetorical theory & criticism, and comparative intellectual history.He is the author of two books:Groundwork for the Practice of the Good Life: Politics and Ethics at the Intersection of North Atlantic and African Philosophy(Routledge: 2017) andThe Intellectual Imagination: Knowledge and Aesthetics in North Atlantic and African Philosophy(University of Notre Dame Press: 2018). His most recent thinking, research, and teachinglimns the contou...

2023 - 2024 CAAAS Faculty Award Winners

Danielle Hodge

Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, College of Communication, Media, Design and Information (CMDI)
CAAAS Faculty AffiliatesCAAAS Executive Committee MembersCAAAS Faculty Fellows
danielle.hodge@colorado.edu

DanielleHodge, PhD,employs a critical race theoretical approach to identity, culture, and language. In particular, she is concerned with how systems of oppression and marginalization inform the identities, discursive practices, and experiences of African Americans. To advance theoretically robust and culturally grounded knowledge about African American life and language worlds, her research agenda is guided by the following questions: How can communication concepts and theories (i.e., discourse analysis) fu...

Henry Lovejoy

Associate Professor, Department of History, College of Arts & Sciences
CAAAS Faculty Affiliates
hlovejoy@colorado.edu

ProfessorLovejoyreceived his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. His first book,Prieto: Yor霉b谩 Kingship in Colonial Cuba during the Age of Revolutions, is a biography of an enslaved African at the root of an African-Cuban religion, commonly known as Santer铆a. It won the Chief Isaac Oluwole Delano best book prize for Yoruba Studies. He is co-editor of the volumeLiberated Africans and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1807-1896(2020) andRegenerated Identities: Documenting African Lives(2022)...

Maputo Mensah

Teaching Associate Professor, Department of Theatre & Dance 鈥 Director of West African Highlife Ensemble, College of Music 鈥 Director of Logo Ligi African Dance Ensemble, College of Arts & Sciences
CAAAS Faculty AffiliatesCAAAS Artists-In-Residence
maputo.mensah@Colorado.edu

Maputo Mensah was born and raised in Accra, Ghana, in a family of professional musicians anddancers. While still a small child, he was dancing and drumming with his family, and before hereached his teens, he was teaching and performing these traditional Ghanaian arts professionally.Later, he was honored to study for many years with MustaphaTettey Addy, one of Ghana鈥檚 premiere artists in traditionalmusic and dance, at the Academy of African Music and Arts.Over the years he has performed and taught with vario...

crystal am nelson

Assistant Professor, Department of Art and Art History, College of Arts & Sciences
CAAAS Faculty Affiliates
crystal.nelson@colorado.edu

crystal am nelson is an assistant professor of art history whose research and teaching focus on Black art and Black visual culture(s) as articulated through painting, photography, film/video, and performance. Her other interests include identity and representation, critical pleasure studies, and contemporary Black life. Her current project examines the visual culture of Black pleasure and the aesthetics of Black joy and safe space in the visual representations of quotidian Blackness as depicted by the paint...

Omedi Ochieng

Associate Professor, Department of Communication, College Communication, Media, Design and Information (CMDI)
CAAAS Faculty Affiliates
Omedi.Ochieng@colorado.edu

Omedi Ochiengspecializes in Africana philosophy & rhetoric, rhetorical theory & criticism, and comparative intellectual history.He is the author of two books:Groundwork for the Practice of the Good Life: Politics and Ethics at the Intersection of North Atlantic and African Philosophy(Routledge: 2017) andThe Intellectual Imagination: Knowledge and Aesthetics in North Atlantic and African Philosophy(University of Notre Dame Press: 2018). His most recent thinking, research, and teachinglimns the contou...

Shawn Trenell O'Neal

Associate Director, Center for African & African American StudiesAssistant Teaching Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies, College of Arts & Sciences
CAAAS Faculty AffiliatesCAAAS Executive Committee MembersCAAAS Administration
shawn.oneal@colorado.edu

Dr. Shawn Trenell O鈥橬eal is Associate Director of the Center for African & African American Studies and Assistant Teaching Professor and Director of Community Engagement Internships in the Department of Ethnic Studies. He is also a renowned DJ and audio producer. Dr. O'Neal serves as Assistant Director of the RAP Lab (The Laboratory for Ritual Arts and Pedagogy) in the School of Education and is a founding member of Lyripeutics Storytelling: Remixing Our Reality Through Hip Hop Education. His research i...

Michele D. Simpson

Associate Teaching Professor, Philosophy, Arts & Culture Residential Academic Program (RAP), College of Arts & Sciences Faculty Affiliate & Research Associate, Ren茅e Crown Wellness Institute
CAAAS Faculty Affiliates
michele.simpson@colorado.edu

Michele D. Simpson is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Philosophy, Arts & Culture Residential Academic Program. She is also a faculty member of the Student Academic Success Center, the Honors Residential Academic Program, and the Program for Excellence in Academics and Community.Her courses reflect her passion and commitment to topics including anti-racism, anti-Blackness, social justice, and the exploration of the intersections that inform myriad lived experiences.Michele鈥檚 course offerings have ...