Dr. Kalenda Eaton, associate professor of English and director of Global Learning, was accepted into the 2016 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute, “Arts of Survival: Recasting Lives in African Cities,” at Indiana University Bloomington, July 6-26.

“I am specifically interested in the role female creative artists play in redefining cultural standards within literature and the arts,” said Dr. Eaton, whose project will explore “the relationship between essentialist ideas of ‘authenticity’ and the rise of cosmopolitan urban identities that appear (on the surface) to dismiss tradition and historical legacies within the African Diaspora.”

The institute will explore the artistic, political, and social aspects of Accra, Ghana; Nairobi, Kenya; Lagos, Nigeria; Port-au-Prince, Haiti; and New Orleans, United States, five cities that share African roots but have developed distinct cultures.