bowen@illinois.edu

I am a scholar of Africa and the African Diaspora in the Department of African American Studies. My research focuses on the importance of land and labor to the struggle for black freedom and self-realization—one of the more important and complicated areas of investigation in the African Diaspora. That interest brought me to the Lusophone world, first to Mozambique and then to Brazil. As an academic, my professional life has been dedicated to charting the struggles of black people in multiple national locations to obtain and maintain access to land, to enjoy the fruit of their labor, and to lead dignified lives—in short, to vindicate their humanity, thereby making relevant the current mantra, “Black Lives Matter.”

Migration, Ethnicity, Tourism, Rural Politics, Land