Performing Sankofa: Institute of African American Research

In 2022, The Institute of African American Research (IAAR) and the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History merged to become the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Research in Black Culture and History. Performing Sankofa is an oral history project focused on the vision and goals that animated the creation and expansion of the IAAR. This staged reading is the culminating project for Comm 565: Oral History and Performance taught by Professor Renée Alexander Craft,

Renée Alexander Craft is Professor of Performance and Cultural Studies in the UNC Department of Communication. Her research and teaching examine the relationship among sociohistorical constructions of Blackness, Black cultural performance, and discourses of Black inclusion and exclusion. Her ethnographic monograph When the Devil Knocks: The Congo Tradition and the Politics of Blackness in 20th Century Panama, was awarded the 2017 American Society of Theatre Research Errol Hill Award in recognition of outstanding scholarship in African American theatre, drama, and/or performance studies. Her novel The Part of Me That’s Mine, which was inspired by her Panama-based research as well as her experiences growing up in a Black funeral home family in North Carolina, is represented by Beth Marshea, owner and lead agent of The Ladderbird Literary Agency. Alexander Craft co-edited The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance with Kathy A. Perkins, Sandra L. Richards, and Thomas F. DeFrantz.