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Urban Ethnography Lab

Urban Ethnography Lab

Supporting Qualitative and Ethnographic Research at the University of Texas at Austin

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Book Salon: Anima Adjepong’s Afropolitan Projects: Redefining Blackness, Sexualities, and Culture from Houston to Accra

Join us on Friday January 28th at 1PM via zoom in celebrating alumna Anima Adjepong’s new book,

“Afropolitan Projects: Redefining Blackness, Sexualities, and Culture from Houston to Accra”.

Beyond simplistic binaries of “the dark continent” or “Africa Rising,” Africans at home and abroad articulate their identities through their quotidian practices and cultural politics. Amongst the privileged classes, these articulations can be characterized as Afropolitan projects–cultural, political, and aesthetic expressions of global belonging rooted in African ideals. This ethnographic study examines the Afropolitan projects of Ghanaians living in two cosmopolitan cities: Houston, Texas, and Accra, Ghana. Anima Adjepong’s focus shifts between the cities, exploring contests around national and pan-African cultural politics, race, class, sexuality, and religion. Focusing particularly on queer sexuality, Adjepong offers unique insight into the contemporary sexual politics of the Afropolitan class. The book expands and complicates existing research by providing an in-depth transnational case study that not only addresses questions of cosmopolitanism, class, and racial identity but also considers how gender and sexuality inform the racialized identities of Africans in the United States and in Ghana. Bringing an understudied cohort of class-privileged Africans to the forefront, Adjepong offers a more fully realized understanding of the diversity of African lives.

Discussants: Professor Gloria González-López, Professor Jordan Conwell, Rui Jie Peng, and Elizabeth Nimmons.

The full book can be accessed by UT Austin students and faculty here. Credentials for the zoom meeting will be circulated through our listservs.

UEL News

  • Book Talk & Graduate Student Workshop with Yuval Feinstein – Rally ‘Round the Flag: The Search for National Honor and Respect in Times of Crisis March 9, 2022
  • Congratulations to UEL Fellow Faith Deckard & Javier Auyero on their recent paper in Annual Review of Sociology! March 9, 2022
  • Book Salon: Anima Adjepong’s Afropolitan Projects: Redefining Blackness, Sexualities, and Culture from Houston to Accra January 24, 2022
  • LA Times Op-Ed by Ethnography Lab Affiliate Michael Sierra-Arévalo January 5, 2022
  • Loïc Wacquant’s Body and Soul: Preface to the Expanded Anniversary Edition October 20, 2021

UEL Beyond Academia

Diamond, Alex and Pedro Arenas. 2020. “Campesinos de Briceño le exigen al Gobierno que cumpla con la sustitución de coca.” El Espectador.

Levy, Eldad. “The Urban Iron Fist: Reflections on the Murder of George Floyd.” Op-Ed, Behevrat Haadam 6.21.2020 [Hebrew]

Levy Eldad. “Violence and the social disintegration of Mexico.” Op-Ed, Open Democracy 7.18.2017 [English]

Levy, Eldad. “México se ha desintegrado como Estado soberano por la guerra.” Op-Ed, SinEmbargo 7.20.2017 [Spanish]

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    • Invisible in Austin
  • Training
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    • Apply to be a Fellow
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  • Pictures from the Field