My research bridges Africana, continental, decolonial, environmental, and feminist philosophy to foreground issues of racism and colonialism for environmental ethics and justice. Specifically, my work is oriented by eco-philosophies that trouble theories of justice inherited from liberal political philosophy, and by ontological politics and practices of freedom operative in racial ecologies, place-based movements, and struggles over land. My research also contributes to continental philosophy and critical theory by examining how Africana and decolonial philosophy repurpose aspects of the former traditions for their own ends.

I understand philosophy as the practice of asking questions that we rarely get to ask either in everyday life or in other disciplines. It enables us to critically reflect on common sense and features of our world that present themselves as necessary and natural. For me, philosophy is a way of challenging hierarchy, domination and socio-ecological destruction, since it allows us to fundamentally question the conditions of the present, and to imagine alternative futures. As a teacher, I aim to empower students by helping them to cultivate the capacity to question themselves and their world; to think, read and write rigorously and critically; and to reflect on what a good life and society might mean.

Professor Bedasse is a historian of Africa and the African diaspora, with a focus on East Africa and the Caribbean. Based on a deep interest in transnational histories, her work moves betwixt and between regions that have traditionally been calcified into separate fields of study. Her interests include the intellectual, political, and social history of decolonization, black internationalism and African diasporic politics.

Her first monograph, Jah Kingdom: Rastafarians, Tanzania, and Pan-Africanism in the age of Decolonization was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2017. Jah Kingdom is an intellectual, political and social history of how continental Africans from Tanzania and diasporic Africans from Jamaica worked together within the context of anti-colonial struggle. Specifically, it traces how Jamaican Rastafarians sought the ideological and practical realization of repatriation to Africa in post-independence Tanzania. It is a history that reveals both the promise and the limitations of diasporic solidarities and pan-African politics. Jah Kingdom was awarded the American Historical Association’s Wesley-Logan Prize for best book on the African Diaspora, and the Anna Julia Cooper and CLR James Award for best book in Africana Studies from the National Council for Black Studies. A Choice Outstanding Academic title, Jah Kingdom was also a finalist for the Albert Raboteau prize for best book in Africana religions.

Is Professor of Anthropology, whose work on the French empire, Francophone West Africa and the Caribbean, and Black Atlantic social thought is located at the intersection of historical anthropology, intellectual history, and critical theory.

Dan Magaziner is a historian of 20th century Africa. He is the author of three books: The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in South Africa, 1968 – 1977 (2010); The Art of Life in South Africa (2016) and Available Light: Omar Badsha and the Struggle to Change South Africa (2024). He received his PhD at the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 2007 and taught at Cornell University before coming to Yale in 2011. A specialist in intellectual and cultural history, he teaches 19th and 20th century African and South African history; the history of the African diaspora; global and comparative international history. He served as editor for Journal of African History and the Ohio Short Histories of Africa, as well as the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of South African History.

Dan is working on two book projects. One, Out of Many: A History of a South African Idea considers how South African and other thinkers from the Global South theorized non-racial and non-nationalist approaches to national identity. In conversation with thinkers from sites in Southeast Asia, North America, and the Middle East, it traces genealogies of pluralism rooted in formerly colonized peoples’ experiences of racism and exclusion. Dan’s second book, tentatively entitled World Man from Africa: Selby Mvusi and the Future traces the intellectual itinerary of a South Africa painter, sculptor, theorist, and designer, and recovers histories of utopia from amidst the ruin of the 20th century.

My research bridges Africana, continental, decolonial, environmental, and feminist philosophy to foreground issues of racism and colonialism for environmental ethics and justice. Specifically, my work is oriented by eco-philosophies that trouble theories of justice inherited from liberal political philosophy, and by ontological politics and practices of freedom operative in racial ecologies, place-based movements, and struggles over land. My research also contributes to continental philosophy and critical theory by examining how Africana and decolonial philosophy repurpose aspects of the former traditions for their own ends.

I understand philosophy as the practice of asking questions that we rarely get to ask either in everyday life or in other disciplines. It enables us to critically reflect on common sense and features of our world that present themselves as necessary and natural. For me, philosophy is a way of challenging hierarchy, domination and socio-ecological destruction, since it allows us to fundamentally question the conditions of the present, and to imagine alternative futures. As a teacher, I aim to empower students by helping them to cultivate the capacity to question themselves and their world; to think, read and write rigorously and critically; and to reflect on what a good life and society might mean.

My research bridges Africana, continental, decolonial, environmental, and feminist philosophy to foreground issues of racism and colonialism for environmental ethics and justice. Specifically, my work is oriented by eco-philosophies that trouble theories of justice inherited from liberal political philosophy, and by ontological politics and practices of freedom operative in racial ecologies, place-based movements, and struggles over land. My research also contributes to continental philosophy and critical theory by examining how Africana and decolonial philosophy repurpose aspects of the former traditions for their own ends.

I understand philosophy as the practice of asking questions that we rarely get to ask either in everyday life or in other disciplines. It enables us to critically reflect on common sense and features of our world that present themselves as necessary and natural. For me, philosophy is a way of challenging hierarchy, domination and socio-ecological destruction, since it allows us to fundamentally question the conditions of the present, and to imagine alternative futures. As a teacher, I aim to empower students by helping them to cultivate the capacity to question themselves and their world; to think, read and write rigorously and critically; and to reflect on what a good life and society might mean.

My research bridges Africana, continental, decolonial, environmental, and feminist philosophy to foreground issues of racism and colonialism for environmental ethics and justice. Specifically, my work is oriented by eco-philosophies that trouble theories of justice inherited from liberal political philosophy, and by ontological politics and practices of freedom operative in racial ecologies, place-based movements, and struggles over land. My research also contributes to continental philosophy and critical theory by examining how Africana and decolonial philosophy repurpose aspects of the former traditions for their own ends.

I understand philosophy as the practice of asking questions that we rarely get to ask either in everyday life or in other disciplines. It enables us to critically reflect on common sense and features of our world that present themselves as necessary and natural. For me, philosophy is a way of challenging hierarchy, domination and socio-ecological destruction, since it allows us to fundamentally question the conditions of the present, and to imagine alternative futures. As a teacher, I aim to empower students by helping them to cultivate the capacity to question themselves and their world; to think, read and write rigorously and critically; and to reflect on what a good life and society might mean.