The Center for the Study of Religion, the Department of Comparative Studies and the Department of African American and African Studies will host Professor Fatima Siwaju (University of Virginia) for a public lecture titled "Of Men and Martyrs: Malcolm X’s Legacy in Colombia’s Black Pacific."
May 19, 2025, marks the centennial of the birth of Malcolm X, an organic intellectual and activist whose life’s work has impacted Black communities across the globe. Based on several years of ethnographic research in Buenaventura and Cali, this presentation explores Malcolm X’s enduring symbolic valence for Black Muslims in the Colombian Pacific. I analyze the impact of Malcolm’s rhetorical legacy on their myriad religious transformations, from their foray into Nation of Islam, to Sunnism and ultimately Shiʿi Islam. Moreover, I argue that Malcolm X’s revolutionary cosmopolitics – which was grounded in Pan-Africanism, Third World political solidarity, and a Black religious vocabulary of protest – struck a chord with Afro-Colombians, who have historically existed at the social and economic margins of Colombian society.
Fatima Siwaju is an assistant professor of African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia. A cultural anthropologist with fieldwork experience in Colombia, and Trinidad and Tobago, Fatima Siwaju researches Islam in the Americas, citizenship and the politics of belonging, and Africana intellectual traditions.
She is currently working on her first book manuscript, which explores the nexus of race, religion and citizenship as they pertain to the spiritual and sociopolitical trajectories of Afro-descendant Muslims in the Colombian Pacific. Her research has been supported by the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, the International Institute of Islamic Thought, and the Crossroads Project on Black Religious Histories, Communities, and Cultures in collaboration with the Henry Luce Foundation. Siwaju also served as a 2022-2023 Dissertation Scholar in the Department of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
This event is free and open to the public. Co-hosted by the Department of Comparative Studies, the Department of African American and African Studies and the Humanities Institute.
The Humanities Institute and its related centers host a wide range of events, from intense discussions of works in progress to cutting-edge presentations from world-known scholars, artists, activists and everything in between.
We value in-person engagement at our events as we strive to amplify the energy in the room. To submit an accommodation request, please send your request to Cody Childs: childs.97@osu.edu.
