Joseph F. Jordan, PhD

Joseph Jordan is Teaching Associate Professor in the African, African American and Diaspora Studies Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also served as Vice Provost for Academic and Community Engagement and, prior to that, as Director of the Sonja H. Stone Center for Black Culture and History for 22 years. His work focuses on social justice movements in the diaspora, and the cultural politics of race, identity and artistic production in the diaspora, explored through representations in visual and other creative arts. For a number of years he worked on southern African liberation movements with the Southern Africa Support Project and, recently, has worked on solidarity projects with groups in Cape Verde, Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil. His local work includes advocacy for the children of incarcerated parents through Our Children’s Place in North Carolina where he serves as co-chair. He also serves on the City of Durham Cultural Advisory Board.

e began is professional career as a Supervisory

Cabral, Solidarity and the African Diaspora in the Americas (book chapter) in Cabral no Cruzamento de Épocas: Comunicações e Discursos  Produzidos no II Simpósio Internacional Amílcar Cabral, Fundação Amílcar Cabral (2013); Can the Artist Speak? Hamid Kachmar’s Subversive Redemptive Art of Resistance in Bodies of Knowledge: Interviews, African Art, and Scholarly Narratives, Joanna Grabski and Carol Magee, eds., book chapter (Indiana); Special issue of The Black Scholar – The Continuing Relevance of Fanonian Thought: Remembering the Life and Work of Frantz Fanon co-edited with Daynali Flores-Rodriguez (vol. 42, nos. 3-4); Afro-Colombia (book chapter) in Transnational Blackness: Navigating the Global Color-Line. Critical Black Studies Series. Manning Marable, ed. Palgrave Macmillan. 2008; The Call of Revolution: The Anti-Apartheid Movement in the 1970’s (book chapter) in No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists, 1953-2002. An Africa Action Book’, Edited by Charles Cobb, Jr., Gail Hovey, and William Minter. Africa World Press.  pp. 133-128. 2007

His curatorial work includes: Aswarm With the Spirits of All Ages Here: Inconceivable Spaces of Slavery and Freedom: The Work of Toni Scott. 25 January – 30 April 2018; Amiri Baraka: Meetings and Remarkable Journeys; This Story Has Not Yet Been Told: The Art of Tim Okamura; La Sombra y el Espiritu II – Women’s Healing Rituals in the Diaspora: The Work of Toni Scott; Nina Simone: What More Can I Say; Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America; and 35 others in the last 15 years across the US, Latin America and Africa.

Previous positions – Visiting Professor, Universidad Politecnica Argelia Laya, Venezuela; Associate Professor, African American Studies, Xavier University of Louisiana; Director, Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, Atlanta; Visiting Professor, Instituto Superior de Educação, Cape Verde; Associate Professor/Founding chair, African/African American Studies, Antioch College, Ohio; Assistant Professor, Human Ecology, Howard University; and Supervisory Senior Research Specialist at the Library of Congress.

Current/Previous Service: Editorial Advisory Board of The Black Scholar – Journal of Black Studies and Research; Editorial Board of PALARA – Publication of the Afro-Latin American Research Association; Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (Board Member); Founding Member – Afro-Colombian Solidarity Network; Stagville (NC) State Historic Site Foundation (Board Member); 2015 North American Curator for the Encontro de Cinema Negro, Brasil, África e Caribe Film Festival, Rio de Janeiro – Brazil; Member, Durham Cultural Advisory Board; Chair, Historic Preservation Commission of Durham, NC; founding Board member and current advisory board co-chair for Our Children’s Place – for the Children of Incarcerated Mothers.