Life Without Basketball: Bilqis Abdul Qaadir

Event Time and Date: Sunday, February 2nd, 10AM-2Pm & 5PM-8PM

Event Location: Freeman Athletic Center

Event Organizers:  Wesleyan Athletics, Student Athlete of Color Leadership Council

Event Description:  (attendance open to the public)  A day of basketball, food, and fun! Join a powerful trailblazer in sports to be inspired by her story and learn how to navigate your own story with strength and intention. This event is tailored for students, staff, faculty, and community members who identify as women.

ASHES TO ASHES Film Screening

Event Time and Date: Thursday February 6, 2025 from 6:00pm-8:00pm

Location: Beckham Hall

Event Organizers: Jewett Center for Community Partnerships and Center for African American Studies

Event Description: (attendance open to the public).  This 25 minute documentary is a collaboration many years in the making - produced by Dr. Shirley Jackson Whitaker and Taylor Reese – that tells the story of master leatherwork artist, Winfred Rembert, who survived an attempted lynching in 1967. 

Dreamgirls Film Screening

Event Time and Date:  Friday, February 7th at 8:00pm ET

Event Location/Zoom Information: Goldsmith Family Cinema at the Jeanine Basinger Center for Film Studies (aka CFS100)

Event Organizers: Wesleyan Film Board and the College of Film and the Moving Image (CFILM)

Event Description:  (attendance open to the public) 2006. USA. Dir: Bill Condon. 130 min . (Free).  A trio of black female soul singers cross over to the pop charts in the early 1960s, facing their own personal struggles along the way. It is a musical drama starring Beyonce, Jamie Foxx, and Eddie Murphy.

Black Hair Care Night 

Event Time and Date: Saturday February 8th, 2025 at 3:00pm E.T

Event Location/Zoom Information: Basement of Malcolm X House 

Event Organizers: Black Student Union (Ujaama)

Event Description: (attendance open to Wesleyan students only) A night coordinated by BSU to teach/provide information on how to take care of black hair (there will be a demonstration on maniting locs, doing braids/cornrows. There will be information shared about local hair stylists as well).

2025 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commeoration Luncheon

Event Time and Date: Tuesday, February 12th, 2025 at 12:00pm E.T

Event Location/Zoom Information: Beckham Hall 

Event Organizers: Office for Equity and Inclusion

Event Description: (attendance open to the public) At the start of every Spring semester we come together as a community to honor the civil rights legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior.  This year, the Wesleyan community is invited to attend a luncheon with a keynote address given by civil rights lawyer, activist, and scholar, Theodore M. Shaw (website).   Please RSVP (link) by Monday, February 3rd.

Jubilee 

Event Time and Date: Saturday February 15th, 2025 at 7:00pm E.T

Event Location/Zoom Information: Beckham Hall 

Event Organizers: Black Student Union(Ujaama), Resource Center, Office of Student Involvement 

Event Description: (attendance open to the public) A Black arts performance night, celebrating Black art during Black History Month.

Love & Basketball Film Screening

Event Time and Date: Saturday, February 15th at 8:00pm ET

Event Location/Zoom Information: Goldsmith Family Cinema at the Jeanine Basinger Center for Film Studies (aka CFS100)

Event Organizers: Wesleyan Film Board and the College of Film and the Moving Image (CFILM)

Event Description:  (attendance open to the public) 2000. USA. Dir:Gina Prince_Bethewood. 120 min. (Free).  Divided into quarters like a real basketball game, Love & Basketball shoes two basketball-obsessed kids, Monica (Sanaa Lathan) and Quincy (Omar Epps), as they make friends on the court at age 11, play basketball in the same high school, then at the same college, and then go pro.

Black History Month Bingo

Event Time and Date: Wednesday, February 19th from 12pm-1pm

Event Location:  The Resource Center

Event Organizers:  BIPOC Connection  

Event Description:  (attendance open to Wesleyan students only) Black History Month Bingo with lunch provided and the opportunity to connect with other BIPOC students and their allies.

On Neo-Colonialism 

Event Time and Date: Thursday February 20th, 2025 at 5:00pm E.T

Event Location/Zoom Information: Resource Center Central Meeting Room and Zoom (Zoom Link)

Event Organizers: Shekinah Mba and Kyla Danquah

Event Description: (attendance open to Wesleyan students only) A political education session on Neocolonialism.

Special preview screening of On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

Event Time and Date: Thursday, February 20th, 2025 at 8:00pm ET

Event Location/Zoom Information: Goldsmith Family Cinema at the Jeanine Basinger Center for Film Studies (aka CFS100)

Event Organizers: Wesleyan Film Board and the College of Film and the Moving Image (CFILM)

Event Description:  (attendance open to the public) 2024. USA. Dir: rungano Nyoni.95 min. (Free)

Malcolm X: Exploring the Hidden specks of the Great Revolutionary

Event Time and Date: February 21st, 2025 at 5:30pm-7pm E.T

Event Location/Zoom Information: Location TBD

Event Organizers: Jesus Martinez-Montes

Event Description: (attendance open to Wesleyan students only) An educational session on the life of Malcolm X that will focus on teaching about the role Islam and women have played in Malcolm X's life, which is often not mentioned or completely distorted. Although the audience would learn about Malcolm X and his revolutionary politics, the goal is to underscore how religion and those around him aided in nurturing his internationalist, anti-imperialist, black revolutionary nationalist politics by the time of his assassination. Food will also be provided at this event. 

Community Campus Day 

Event Time and Date: Saturday, February 22nd, 2025, 9:00am-12:30pm E.T

Event Location/Zoom Information: Usdan and Boger Hall

Event Organizers: Jewett Center for Community Partnerships 

Event Description (50 characters or less, a quick one sentence description): We invite local 6th-12th graders to visit campus and engage in free hands-on workshops. The February theme is heritage and will feature an African dance, leather working, gamelan, and creative writing.  RSVP here.

Ebony Ball

Event Time and Date: Saturday, February 22nd, 2025,  at 8:00pm ET

Event Location/Zoom Information: Russell House

Event Organizers: Ujamaa Black Student Union

Event Description:  (attendance open to Wesleyan students only) Get glamorous for the annual Ebony Ball. A chance for Wesleyan’s Black students and their allies to celebrate the month in community!

Finding the Spirit of Inanga - Closing Celebration 

Event Time and Date:  Friday, February 28th, 2025 at 12:00noon ET

Event Location/Zoom Information: Smith Reading Room in Olin Library 

Event Organizers: Aaron Bittel, Chance Kinyange Boas, Olin Library

Event Description: (attendance open to the public)  Finding the Spirit or Inanga curated by Chance Kinyange Boas. Includes a hands-on workshop (11:00am, limited space) with kora master Yacouba Diabaté, a brief closing talk by the curator, and a performance (12:00pm, open to all).

Black Children’s Book Week (BCBW) Fair

Event Time and Date: Saturday, March 1st, 2025 10:00am-3:00pm

Event Location/Zoom Information: Fayerweather & Boger Hall

Event Organizers: Jewett Center for Community Partnerships, Olin Library, Middletown Racial Justice Coalition, Middletown Anti-Racism Task Force

Event Description:  (attendance open to the public)   BCBW is “a global celebration of Black children and the people who ensure Black children are represented in books and other children’s media.”. This event is a BCBW Book Fair that caters to children—pre-K to 12th grade—and is designed to raise awareness about the lack of representation of Black characters in children's literature and media. We hope the BCBW Book Fair will inspire communities to continue diversifying our classroom and home libraries. All ages welcome. RSVP here.

Discussion with author Heath Pearson  

Event Time and Date: Thursday March 27th, 2025 at 4:30pm 

Event Location: PAC 100

Event Organizers: Anthropology Department 

Event Description: (attendance open to the public)  Heath Pearson (Georgetown University) to campus in March to speak about his new book Life Beside Bars: Confinement and Capital in an American Prison Town. The book is an ethnographic study of carcerality, labor, and social life in New Jersey. The text thickly describes and  extends the contours of what is understood as the  “prison-industrial complex”; turning ethnographic scrutiny  to a region with five correctional facilities, Pearson engages not only  with materialist understandings of “labor” and “life” as they shape the conditions of Black life and death under colonial capitalist modernity,  but also with the limitations of such understandings as theorized by scholars in black studies.