The AfroAlgorhythms committee would also like to recognize the late Professor Sue Edna Houchins, a former Associate Professor of Africana at Bates, who was a steadfast champion of critical inquiry and academic freedom. In support of continued academic research, particularly new interdisciplinary studies centered on the African diaspora, we invite you to contribute to the Sue Houchins Memorial Fund.

The Fund shall support an annual award for a graduating senior who has distinguished themselves in completing a thesis or equivalent capstone exercise that reflects the ideas, research, and teaching interests that presided over Professor Sue Houchins’ life. Those topics include, but are not limited to, the study of Africa and the worldwide African Diaspora; the intersection of Blackness, gender, sexuality, and class; the study of race as an epistemological category; religion and spirituality; the study of queer representations in African and African diasporic literature; and, the importance of the Black archive in the digital age, especially the digital humanities.

Professor Houchins was an essential member of the faculty program committees in Africana and Gender and Sexuality Studies, and an abiding inspiration to the programs’ students. She institutionalized the study of Black women’s intellectual tradition in the Bates curriculum.  Alumnae and alumni often recount with awe the volume and range of books in Sue’s office and home, and their cognizance that Professor Houchins knew every volume. They remember just as readily her wit and force in the classroom, and how her pedagogy brought the relevance of intersectional queer feminist thought to life. 

Professor Houchins also served on the Digital and Computational Studies Program Committee. She dove into the work of our unit with enthusiasm, and actively and excitedly imagined how her own scholarship might embrace future digital and computational work. It is this love of learning, embracing the challenges of new methods, and reaching for connections between ideas and people that helped forge the current bond between DCS and Africana.

Displays of Sue Edna Houchins’ Work

Dr. Sue Houchins was a prolific writer, researcher, and reader. During the dates coinciding with AfroAlgorhythms, the Bates Library will display two exhibits: one focused on her own professional work and the second a sampling of her personal library that is now part of the Bates collection.

Phillips Lecture Memorial Dinner

The opening dinner for the AfroAlgorhythms is in honor of Professor Houchins.

Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, PhD: Professor Emerita of African-American Studies and Sociology, Colby College will give a keynote “Until I See My Saviour Face to Face’: Black Women, Theophanies of Power, and Movements of the Spirit”.

All faculty, staff, and students are invited to join us. Due to room capacity, you should use the registration link for the conference, which gives you the option to specify which conference activities you will attend. We will close the registration link when we have reached venue capacity.

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To register for this event, please click below.

Deadline for registration is May 7th.