On Friday, January 22, 2016, the Jacob H. Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies of Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, 700 East Oakwood Boulevard, will present Dr. Wade Nobles in a lecture on his new book, The Island of Memes: Haiti's Unfinished Revolution. The lecture will be held in the Donn F. Bailey Legacy Hall at CCICS. Doors open at 6:00 p.m. and the program begins at 6:30 p.m.

Dr. Nobles is an internationally acclaimed African centered Psychologist, researcher, educator, and author. In this regard, Dr. Nobles is Professor Emeritus in Africana Studies and Black Psychology at San Francisco State University and is a founding member and past president (1994-95) of the Association of Black Psychologists. He is also the founding Executive Director of the Institute for the Advanced Study of Black Family Life and Culture, based in Oakland, California, where he has spent over forty years researching, documenting, publishing, designing, and implementing African Centered service and training programs. He has served as a visiting professor in Salvador de Bahia and Sao Paulo in Brazil.

Additionally, Dr. Nobles is the author of over one hundred articles, chapters, research reports, and books, and is the co-author of the seminal article in Black Psychology, “Voodoo or IQ: An Introduction to African Psychology.” He is also the author of African Psychology Toward Its Reclamation, Reascension, and Revitalization: Seeking the Sakha Foundational Writings in African Psychology, an anthology of over thirty years of African centered research

Dr. Nobles, in discussing his latest book, The Island of Memes: Haiti’s Unfinished Revolution, will address the following questions: What is the significance of the Haitian Revolution for all humanity? What is the condition of African people throughout the world? How do we heal shattered consciousness and fractured identity? What role will African people play in the future?

Dr. Nobles explains that “this work is guided by the additional belief that a critical task and challenge of the African-centered scholar/intellectual is to identify and promote the interests and image of African and Africa’s children by understanding the past, present, and future of our human story through the Africanization of the epistemological, terminological, aesthetic and hermeneutical groundings of the scientific, artistic and investigative disclosure.”

Continuing, Dr. Nobles writes that “Likewise, the African centered psychologist must simultaneously understand the past, present, and future of African and Africa’s children and center the analytical, therapeutic process, and rehabilitative discourse in an African episteme and praxis.”

In this regard, Dr. Nobles writes “Using the Haitian Revolution as a case study exemplar, this manuscript examines Haiti at a critical period in time to discuss the role consciousness and identity played in its liberation struggle and the formation of nationhood. In asserting itself as an independent and authentic scientific discipline, Black psychology is utilized, herein, to understand not only the Haitian mind in conflict but the African mind struggling for liberation worldwide.”

In 1985, the late great African centered scholar, Dr. Jacob H. Carruthers, wrote the book, The Irritated Genie: An Essay on the Haitian Revolution. This African centered groundbreaking analysis of the Haitian Revolution has provided a foundation for Dr. Nobles in his recent book on the Haitian Revolution.

Dr. Carruthers wrote that, “The liberator of Haiti, Jean Jacques Dessalines, in his speech accepting the office of Governor Genera for Life of the newly Independent Black Nation, referring to the possible attempted invasion of Haiti, asserted that upon their approach…

The irritated genie of Haiti looming out of the bosom of the sea

Appears, his menacing face rouses the waves, stirs up storms

and his mighty hand smashes or scatters their ships.”

Taking this concept from Dr. Carruthers’ work, Dr. Nobles also explains that “the Haitian Revolution via the energy (spirit) vibrations embedded in the Irritated Genie.”

I encourage the community to come out in full force on Friday, January 22, 2016 at CCICS to hear this lecture by Dr. Wade Nobles on his profound book— The Island of Memes: Haiti’s Unfinished Revolution. Look forward to seeing you. For further information call 773.268.7500.