Professor Frank Gunderson (Musicology, Florida State University) is the invited speaker for the African Studies Spring Lecture. Dr. Gunderson's research and teaching interests include musical intersections with Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) and sonic repatriation, African history, Islam, musical labor, veteran’s issues, biographical approaches, refugee communities and documentary film.

The March 14 African Studies Spring Lecture events will also feature the recognition of students who have successfully completed the Certificate in African Studies program, an award luncheon, and the screening of Prof. Gundersson's award-winning documentary, “Beloved Youth of Many Days: Stories about Mlimani Park Orchestra.” 

Dr. Evelyn Saavedra Autry is a 2020-2021 American Council of Learned Societies Emerging Voices Fellow and a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in Race, Racism, and Inequality at the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) at Rutgers University. She received her PhD in Romance Languages with a specialization in Latin American Studies and a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies from the University of Georgia. Her research creates a conversation between various fields of knowledge, particularly Indigenous epistemologies, and pedagogies, literature, cultural studies on (de)coloniality, and gender studies, through the analysis of Andean women’s identity formations.