Q & A With Inaugural Mellon Arts Project International Visiting Professor Maboula Soumahoro

Q & A With Inaugural Mellon Arts Project International Visiting Professor Maboula Soumahoro

1. What was your experience like as the inaugural International Visiting Professor for the Mellon Arts Project?
   
   Walking in the footsteps of Edwige Dandicat and Salim Washington was such a great honor, I was humbled. This past year provided me with the best circumstances to teach newly developed, more creative course, continue and complete my research, fostering as well as deepening connections with colleagues and students, and fully taking part in the intellectual life both on and off campus . This has been an excellent year!
    
2. When writing Black is the Journey, Africana the Name how did the different sensibilities and identities of Black populations in Africa, the Americas, and Europe shape this endeavor, and what challenges can you identify from these differences?
   
   I think Black is the Journey, Africana the Name is really and exploration of the African Diaspora and the nuances and subtleties that this very notion entails. Thus, Africa, the Americas, and Europe are different and differing locales that need to be dealt with both separately and simultaneously. The diaspora is as much about the similarities than the differences and tensions. Blackness, as construction and a wide array of lived experiences, has not been constructed in the same manner throughout history and throughout geography.
    
3. What is your advice to students who are interested in pursuing arts-centered research through the AAADS department?
   
   The students have so much to teach us. I always encourage them the pursue their own intuitions and novel approaches. I also advise them to rely on the wealth of knowledge, expertise, and experience that their professors are more than happy to share with them. The students -often from a younger generation- should use us to go further and further. I think the combination of arts and research truly offers an opportunity to think, act, and create with more complexity, which is always a great thing.
    
4. What are some of your memorable moments in NYC?
   
   All my weekly classes were memorable moments. The opportunities to visit the Met with students was a memorable moment. The events I was able to participate in with colleagues that I admire and respect so much were memorable. One of them includes a discussion with Saidiya Hartman and Kaiama Glover. Collaborating with Dean Cobb (School of Journalism) and Frank Guridy (The Holder Initiative), as well as countless departments and programs – AAADS and Alliance Program included- to host a screening and Q&A with director Alice Diop was also one of the highlights of my academic year.
    
5. What are some of your forthcoming projects that we should keep an eye out for?
   
   I am happy to announce that my translation in French of Saidiya Hartman’s Lose Your Mother: A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route is coming out this month in France. I spent much of my time as an International Visiting Professor working on this labor of love. This academic year, I am undertaking an ambitious project that is also a work of translation, but this time not from on language and imaginary to another, rather from one form to another. I will begin doing so as a fellow at the Institute of Ideas and Imagination, in Paris, France.