Afrotōpia Event Series
EVENT DETAILS
All events are free and open to the public.
¿De qué color son los blancos? Book Event with Author Odome Angone
Date: Tuesday, December 2, 2025
Time: 5:00-6:30 PM
Location: Wolf Law 100
Presenters: Odome Angone, Stephanie Abdalla, Dulce Aldama, and Leila Gómez
This conversation will be in Spanish with live English interpretation.
Light refreshments will be served.
AFROTŌPIA Screening #1
Date: Wednesday, December 3, 2025
Time: 6:00-9:00 PM
Location: Muenzinger E0048
Presenters:David Mboussou, Odome Angone, Lissell Quiroz, Ernest Baloka Ngong, and Leila Gómez
6:00 PM: Roundtable with presenters
6:40 PM: AFROTŌPIA Screening
Light refreshments will be served.
Decolonial Media Event
Date: Thursday, December 4, 2025
Time: 2:15-5:15 PM
Location: Center for British and Irish Studies Study Room (Norlin M548)
2:15-2:45 PM
Presentation: Project SIRA [Savoirs, Idées, Réseau, Archives]
Presenters: Odome Angone and Lissell Quiroz
3:00-4:00 PM
Panel: About Afrotopia and Decolonial Cinema in the Global South
Presenters: Odome Angone, Malick Lo, Lissell Quiroz, Leila Gómez
4:15-5:15 PM
Conversation with director David Mboussou
Moderator: Brian Valente-Quinn
Light refreshments will be served.
Sacred Plants and Indigenous Medicine Panel
Date: Friday, December 5, 2025
Time: 5:00-6:30 PM
Location: Williams Village Center Dining & Community Commons 108 (Innovation Station)
Presenters: Paola Andrea Sánchez Castañeda, David Mboussou, Alexander Dawson, and Natalie Avalos
The Sacred Plants and Indigenous Medicine Panel is a hybrid event. If you would like to attend virtually, please register to receive the Zoom link here.
Light refreshments will be served.
ABOUT THE PRESENTERS & ORGANIZERS
Stephanie Abdalla
Presenter
Stephanie Graeml Abdalla (PhD student, Media Studies) is a journalist and human rights activist from Brazil, whose practical work and research focus on alternative human rights discourses, media activism, feminist journalism, and transnational identities. In her home country, she received a bachelor's in Journalism from PUCPR and a Graduate Diploma in Human Rights, Social Responsibility, and Global Citizenship from PUCRS. She obtained her Master's degree in Gender and Communication from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, in Spain, and is currently pursuing her PhD in Media Studies and a Graduate Certificate in Women & Gender Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. Stephanie is committed to creating and advancing grassroots media iniciatives that inform theory, and vice versa, as she believes in bridging the gap between activism and research.
Dulce Aldama
Presenter
Dulce Aldama (PhD, University of Colorado Boulder) is an Assistant Professor and the Cultural Heritage Librarian at the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries. She has more than 20 years of experience working in university museums in the United States, where she has participated in the organization and development of many exhibitions and educational programs. Her research focuses on the relationship between cultural heritage, travel literature, the history of science, museums, and the narrative construction of the nation in Mexico, from the eighteenth century to the present. Her academic interests include representations in museums, curatorial studies, decolonization, postcolonial theory, travel literature, thing theory, space theory, and technology in museums.
Odome Angone
Presenter
Odome Angone is a research professor at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar. She has been researching epistemic justice in academic contexts for over ten years. The author of several scientific articles and numerous collective books, she has compiled the collective book Las españolas afrodescendientes hablan sobre identidad y empoderamiento (2018). Her novel Roi-dieu coupé (2013) questions forgetfulness in a postcolonial context. Her essay “Femmes noires francophones” (2020) offers an intersectional perspective on gender, race, and coloniality.
Natalie Avalos
Moderator
Natalie Avalos is as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies and Affiliate Faculty in the Religious Studies and Women and Gender Studies Departments. Dr. Avalos is an ethnographer of religion whose work in comparative Indigeneities explores urban Indigenous and Tibetan refugee religious life, healing historical trauma, and decolonial praxis. She received her doctorate from the University of California at Santa Barbara in Religious Studies with a special focus on Native American and Indigenous Religious Traditions and Tibetan Buddhism. S She is currently working on her manuscript titled Decolonizing Metaphysics: Transnational Indigeneities and Religious Refusal. It argues that the reassertion of land-based ethics among Native and Tibetan peoples not only de-centers settler colonial claims to legitimate knowledge but also articulates forms of liberation rooted in interdependent relations of power among all persons, human and other-than human. She is a Chicana of Mexican Indigenous descent, born and raised in the Bay Area.
Ernest Ngong
Presenter
Ernest Baloka Ngong studies Francophone Literature at the University of Colorado Boulder and has a background in Political Science from the University of Douala in Cameroon. His research explores the intersections between literature, memory, ecology, and politics in postcolonial African contexts. He focuses on the aesthetics of trauma and resistance, as well as on environmental humanities, particularly the dialogue between spirituality, ecopoetics, and collective memory. His academic interests also extend to political thought, governance, and postcolonial state systems in Africa. In addition to his scholarly work, he is an emerging poet and writer, whose creative practice weaves together themes of exile, ancestral voice, and the search for meaning.
Alec Dawson
Presenter
Alexander Dawson is a professor of at the University of Albany (SUNY). He was originally trained as a Mexican historian. In a career characterized by border crossings, Dawson began his life and education on the Canadian prairies, and since arriving in the US in 1991 has repeatedly moved between the US, Mexico, and Canada. The work that brings him here today is the clearest distillation of those peregrinations. Conceived and written largely in Canada, it meandered through the history of peyote on both sides of the US-Mexican border from its earliest appearances in the records of the Spanish Inquisition to the current day. Building on earlier research that considered the different meanings attached to indigeneity in the US, Mexico, and Canada (that work was principally focused on boarding schools), his book The Peyote Effect explored the distinct historical trajectories and legal regimes associated with peyotism in the US and Mexico, as well as the ways in which peyote has been an object of fascination for non-indigenous people over several centuries.
His current work explores a different transnational phenomenon: bicycle lanes. Bike Lanes Are the End of Us, which focuses on the simultaneous creation of cycling infrastructure in Mexico City and Vancouver and its connections to spatial inequality, political polarization, and gentrification in both cities, is due to be published in 2026.
Suranjan Ganguly
Presenter
Suranjan Ganguly (Ph.D. Purdue University) is Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has taught a wide range of courses that focus primarily on poetic cinema and the poetics of cinema, drawing on the aesthetic, cultural, and philosophical contexts of European and Asian film. Some of his courses include Time, Memory, Cinema, Cinema and Landscape, Cinema and the Poetics of Desire, Cinema and Otherness, Cinema and Transgression, Cinema, Exile, Nostalgia, and Cinema and Transcendence. He has also taught interdisciplinary courses such as Film, Photography and Modernism, and classes on international directors (Bergman, Kieslowski, Bresson, Antonioni, Bertolucci, and Kurosawa). He is the recipient of the Marinus Smith Teaching Award.
Ganguly is the author of Satyajit Ray: In Search of the Modern (2000). His book on Adoor Gopalakrishnan, India's most distinguished contemporary filmmaker, was published in 2015 by Anthem Press, UK. He has edited Stan Brakhage’s interviews for the University Press of Mississippi and the book was published in 2017. His critical essays have appeared in Sight and Sound, Film Criticism, East-West Film Journal, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, South Asian Cinema Journal, and Asian Cinema.
Ganguly created the Stan Brakhage Film Series--Celebrating Stan--in 2003 in memory of his close friend, colleague, and mentor. He served as the director of the Brakhage Center from 2015-2020 and has been actively involved in presenting the filmmaker’s work in the US and abroad. He was invited to curate the three-part Unknown Brakhage show at the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris in 2010 and again in 2018 to present Brakhage’s work. He has also spoken on Brakhage and curated shows at major venues in London, Rome, Lisbon, Berlin, Dublin, Vienna, and Mexico City.
Originally from Calcutta, India, Ganguly studied at St. Xavier's College and Jadavpur University before coming to the US. His PhD dissertation was an interdisciplinary study of the work of Satyajit Ray, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Virginia Woolf.
Leila Gómez
Presenter, Moderator, & Organizer
Leila Gómez is a Professor in the department of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is also the project director for the RIO-sponsored grant project "Indigenous Documentaries and Land Struggle." Her research focuses on travel writing in Latin America, cultural encounters, and imperial narratives. Her first book was Iluminados y tránsfugas: Relatos de viajeros y ficciones nacionales en Argentina, Paraguay y Perú (Iberoamericana Vervuert 2009) and her most recent book, Impossible Domesticity: Travels in Mexico (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021) is about travel writing in Mexico and includes the work of photographers, journalists, archaeologists, and writers from Europe and North and South America. Gómez has also published La piedra del escándalo: Darwin en Argentina (Simurg 2008), Darwinism in Argentina: Major Texts 1845-1910 (Bucknell UP, 2011), and co-edited Entre Borges y Conrad: Estética y territorio en William Henry Hudson (Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2012) and Teaching Gender through Latin American, Spanish, and Latino Literature and Culture (Sense Publishers 2015).
David Mboussou
Presenter & Director of AFROTŌPIA
From film director to Advisor to the President of the Gabonese Republic, David's career has a particularly transdisciplinary character, while never deviating from the unique reason which motivates each of his experiences: the promotion of African natural and cultural heritage, as a source of inspiration for a sustainable development model.
Born in Libreville, David is passionate about art and philosophy. He grew up in Libreville and spent most of his school holidays in the village of Fougamou, whose cultural and natural atmosphere crystallized in him vivid sensory impressions which he would later strive to transcribe in his audiovisual creations.
Self-taught in audiovisual production, David is the mind behind the award-winning web documentary I AM CONGO, promoted by renowned platforms such as National Geographic. This project aimed to reorient the often biased representation of Africa in Western media. With Afrotōpia, he reclaims African narratives through history, ecology, and spirituality, bridging memory, emancipation, and métissage.
His institutional career, notably as Advisor to the President of the Gabonese Republic and his collaboration with institutions such as UNESCO and the French Embassy in Gabon, demonstrate his commitment at different levels to cultural cooperation and sustainable development. As Chairman of the Board of Directors of Clean Africa, David was involved in waste management in Libreville. In addition, he co-founded Mannah Kitchen, combining catering and nutritional therapy.
Malick Lo
Presenter
Malick Lo, a native of Louga, Senegal, is a graduate student in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he is pursuing an M.A. in the French program. Concurrently, he is completing a Master’s degree in African and Postcolonial Studies at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal, where he also earned his undergraduate degree in the same field.
His academic interests include twenty-first-century Francophone literature and theatre, trauma studies, African cinema, and Ajami literatures (African languages written in enriched forms of the Arabic script) particularly as practiced within the Murid community of Senegal. He is especially interested in how these cultural forms engage with social realities, preserve historical memory, and contribute to decolonial thought.
Prior to joining CU Boulder, Malick taught French at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, where he supported instruction in the Department of French and Francophone Studies. He currently teaches FREN 1010 and aspires to a long-term academic career as a professor and scholar.
Lo spends his free time producing podcasts, often outdoors, that support his love for reflection, creativity, and dialogue.
Lissell Quiroz
Presenter
Lissell Quiroz holds a PhD in History and is a professor of Latin American Studies at CY Cergy Paris Université. She is a member of the AGORA laboratory and the Institut Universitaire de France (class of 2023-2028). Her research focuses on the history of women, feminism, and health in the Americas between the 19th and 20th centuries. Her latest book is Pensées décoloniales, Une introduction aux théories critiques d’Amérique latine (La Découverte, 2023). She is also co-creator of the podcast "N’Autre Histoire," which analyzes historical events from a decolonial perspective.
Paola Andrea Sánchez-Castañeda
Presenter
Paola Andrea Sánchez-Castañeda is a cultural anthropologist working in the fields of critical indigenous studies and urban environmental studies, particularly in Latin America. Her research focuses on the ontological dimensions of indigeneity, territory, nature, and the sacred of the Muysca of Suba, an urban indigenous community located in Bogotá, Colombia, with whom she has collaborated throughout her master’s and doctoral research for more than eight years. Andrea earned her PhD in global and sociocultural studies—anthropology track, and her MA in religious studies from Florida International University, and she has been a member of the Global Indigenous Forum (GIF) at the same institution.
During her postdoctoral fellowship at Center for the Study of World Religions (Harvard University), Andrea works collaboratively with the Muysca community to document the use of sacred plant medicines and their vital role in the process of indigenous revitalization and territorial defense in the city of Bogota.
Brian Valente-Quinn
Moderator
Brian Valente-Quinn is Associate Professor of Francophone African studies in the Department of French and Italian. His research focuses on theater and performance in West Africa and France with a specific interest on the topics of decoloniality, immigration, cultural politics, and extremism. His monograph Senegalese Stagecraft: Decolonizing Theater-Making in Francophone Africa, uses an interdisciplinary approach to explore the politics and aesthetic innovations of the theatrical stage in Senegal. Valente-Quinn teaches classes in French and English on Francophone African literature, contemporary theater in the French-speaking world, and the representation of minority communities in France.
Lydia Wagenknecht
Organizer
Lydia Wagenknecht is an instructor at Metropolitan State University of Denver and the University of Colorado Boulder. She is also the Communications and Events Manager for the RIO Grant project "Indigenous Documentaries and Land Struggle." A Fulbright-Hays DDRA and Fulbright U.S. Student awardee, her research examines intersections between climate change and music making in Chilean Antarctica. As a research assistant at the American Music Research Center, she conducted five years of community-engaged research in Pueblo, Colorado through the NEH-funded project “Soundscapes of the People: A Musical Ethnography of Pueblo, CO.”
Wagenknecht holds a PhD in Musicology/Ethnomusicology from the University of Colorado Boulder and a B.A. in Wide-Range Music Education (Choral/General Music) from Wisconsin Lutheran College.