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CSUDH News

The primary source of news and information about California State University, Dominguez Hills, its students, faculty, and staff.

Africana Studies

Africana Studies Professor Puts Students First

February 28, 2023 By Kandis Newman

Africana Studies Professor Puts Students First
Meryah Fisher, CSUDH Africana Studies adjunct professor.

Everyone who attended the Black History Month opening celebration at CSUDH in early February was struck by the passion and energy of the woman who kicked off the proceedings. As she recited two poems and performed an original song, it was clear that Africana Studies Adjunct Professor Meryah Fisher had a palpable connection to the students in attendance, who enthusiastically cheered and danced along.

Such connections are by design. A large part of Fisher’s teaching is formulated to center her students as people before delving into the coursework. “We start out every single day with the question ‘How are you?’,” she says. “I didn’t even bother going over the syllabus during the first week this semester, because it was more important for us to do the relationship building.”

Fisher believes that too many professors get caught up in the amount of information they’re teaching, losing sight of those they’re teaching. “We start off by shoving work down people’s throats,” she says. “I say, let’s let people be people first. Let’s find out who everyone is. Let’s give them a second to meet each other. That has really helped to expand their participation in class, because they want to participate. It’s not forced on them.”

“I don’t count attendance,” she continues. “They paid for this. I tell them flat out, you can waste your money and not show up. That’s on you. I’m not going to tell you what to do and I’m not going to babysit you. But if you want to be here and you want to engage, great, let’s do that!”

Born and raised in a small New Jersey borough, Fisher says that she chose CSUDH because she was trying to explore life as far away from her hometown as possible. “I was definitely running away,” she says. “It was just that time in your teenage life when you’re asking what else is out there. Because my high school was in a failing district, it didn’t have expectations for us students. Nobody was talking to me about college.”

“I had a GPA over 4.0, and I had high SAT scores, and I could have gone anywhere,” she recalls. “But since it wasn’t a conversation we were having in school, I had no confidence in that. CSUDH was the only college I applied to, because I knew I could get in.”

Fisher’s transition to college life away from home led to more pain than the typical culture shock. She was a victim of sexual assault during her first semester, and wanted to leave school and return home. Her mother helped convince her to stick it out, and as Fisher says, “I’ve literally spent my entire life surviving. I buried myself in my work and graduated with two majors and a minor in four years.”

One of the reasons students connect with Fisher so strongly is her willingness to be open with them about her own struggles. “I’ve managed some pretty severe depression and anxiety since childhood, plus complex PTSD from domestic violence, and I’m very new to the self-love journey,” she says. “I’m only about two years in, actually.”

Meryah Fisher, CSUDH Africana Studies adjunct professor.

“I think when folks see me, their biases build more assumptions than truths… most folks would never imagine the life I’ve lived. I know this sounds dark, but it’s important. Others needs to know they can make it, too. So I’ve embedded activism around self-love and ending domestic violence into my platform as an intellectual artist.”

Fisher didn’t plan on getting into teaching after graduating from CSUDH. She was working at a nonprofit homeless services organization when she got a call from one of her former professors, Miguel Gutierrez of the Chicana/o Studies program, who thought she would be a good choice to lead an Africana Studies course for a local high school through the College of Extended Education (now the College of Continuing & Professional Education).

“I said, ‘Okay, cool,’ and got called in to start the next day,” she says. “I’ve been teaching here for seven and a half years since. This is where I found a love. I love what I do. I love the students, I love being an alum, I love all those things. Recently, I’ve come to understand that my position here is really about being the representation for students that I needed to see myself, but wasn’t there when I was in school. I’m here for them.”

The professor is always open and honest about her opinions, and has been known to ruffle a few feathers on campus, as she puts it. “When things are wrong, I’m going to call that out,” she says. “Because I love the students here and what we are building, I hate when things are wrong. I love the space and what it can do.”

One of Fisher’s most popular courses is Africana Studies 205: Introduction to Hip-Hop. “I have the impression that the class came to me because I’m the youngest,” she laughs. “I’m no expert on hip-hop. I think that’s a misconception about being a professor. We’re not always experts. We’re learning a lot of the content as we go. A lot of teaching is just knowing how to teach material, whether or not you are an expert in it.”

“I’ve definitely learned more over the years, but I still don’t consider myself an expert,” she adds. “I spend a lot of time learning with my students, offering them questions to consider that I don’t have the answers to. I want to see what their development is, what their thought process is. Many professors are not willing to admit that they’re not experts, and won’t admit that they need to learn things, too. You have to be willing to learn.”

When Fisher took over the Intro to Hip-Hop class, it was primarily dry theory, she recalls. Students didn’t listen to music or watch videos. In order to get accepted as an academic discipline, the study of hip-hop originally had to go overboard with scholarship and theoretical discussions. “When I took it over, it was already in the university,” she says. “So I started making some changes.”

While there’s still plenty of heavy reading, “We also do a lot of examination of pop culture,” Fisher says. “We look at the news and what’s happening in the world around us. We make it more of an immersive experience. Hip-hop is not just the music or the dances, it’s a movement. It’s a method of us as a community finding out what’s happening, sharing information, and resolving problems.”

“We have this this idea about who hip-hop is for and what it is that has permeated the culture, especially in mainstream hip-hop,” she adds. “It’s very repetitive. The drugs, the violence, the sex, the quick fame, the money. But hip-hop has humble beginnings, solid community beginnings. It was really a space that was challenging a lot of our social and economic and political understandings around race.

“That was dangerous at the time, and it’s still considered dangerous. There’s an understanding of race being really about the social expectations and experiences, as opposed to the anthropological, the genetic, or the biological. Developing that understanding in the community was dangerous, and was one of the reasons that hip-hop was co-opted in the way that it was, and why we hear what we hear on the radio today–just different voices saying the same words over and over again.”

As Black History Month 2023 comes to a conclusion, Fisher believes that hip-hop should be more universally acknowledged as Black history. “It started on the backs and breath of Black people. I don’t know how much more ‘Black history’ you can get than that. I’m just trying to keep it real.”

As her students can attest, Professor Fisher is definitely succeeding in that respect.

Fun Facts About Meryah Fisher

What do you enjoy doing when you’re not working?
Music, art, poetry, open mics… anything creative!

Favorite movie?
A very juxtaposed tie between Bamboozled (a Spike Lee Joint) and Jurassic Park!

Favorite book?
Jurassic Park! by Michael Crichton

Favorite song:
Currently it’s “Love Again“ by Alex Isley

First concert/Last concert/Best concert:
First: The Moody Blues; Last: Alex Isley; Best: either Ozzfest or Afropunk

What’s your favorite place to spend time?
In the community… local small cafés and gatherings

What’s a place you’ve never been to that you’d like to travel to?
Paris

Cats or dogs?
Both!! All the animals!!!

What inspires you to get up in the morning?
Every day is a fresh slate for creating my best life… I get up every morning at the excitement of what life can look like with me finally being its author.

What’s one thing you couldn’t live without?
Coffee – my mom still sends me Wawa coffee from home!

Describe yourself in three words:
“Authentic. Intellectual. Creative.”

Donna Nicol Wins 2021 Excellence in Service Award

April 20, 2021 By Paul Browning

Donna Nicol, associate professor and department chair of Africana Studies, has earn the 2021 Excellence in Service Award
Donna Nicol, associate professor and department chair of Africana Studies, has received the 2021 Excellence in Service Award.

Donna Nicol, associate professor and department chair of Africana Studies, has a personal connection to CSUDH. “I grew up nearby, and my mother went to Dominguez Hills,” says Nicol. “My first job out of college was also at CSUDH. It’s been a staple in my life.”

Nicol says that after working for a decade as an assistant/associate professor in women’s and gender studies at CSU Fullerton, getting the position at CSUDH “felt like I was coming home.”

Nicol has been a vibrant, vocal presence on campus since her return. Her work helping to revive the Africana Studies department, spirited support of ethnic studies efforts, and efforts co-chairing the CSUDH Anti-Racism Task Force have helped her earn the 2021 Excellence in Service Award. The honor recognizes faculty contributions to university governance and development and acknowledges that service and partnership are an essential component of CSUDH’s mission.

When Nicol arrived on the CSUDH campus in 2017, she took over as chair of a department that faced several challenges, including dwindling enrollment and low visibility on and off campus.

“There had been very little stability in the department for a number of years due in part to the heavy administrative turnover in our college and university in general,” says Nicol. “I was brought in to help revive it. Africana Studies enrollment had dropped pretty precipitously since 2010.”

Nicol oversaw a major overhaul of the Africana Studies B.A. degree. “When I came in, the program was hard for students to navigate and there was very little curricular coherence to the requirements. It made no sense to me, so I know it made no sense to the students.” She spearheaded the lengthy program modification process, which resulted in a new 36-unit Africana Studies B.A. program that is more focused and dynamic.

As chair, Nicol is “the queen of self-promotion,” she laughs. “It’s important that our faculty tell their own stories. I have no shame in telling people that our department is doing all these amazing things for our students and with our scholarship. I’m really trying to raise the profile of the department and CSUDH.”

Ethnic Studies and Anti-Racism

Nicol has also been a vocal proponent of expanded ethnic studies in the CSU and worked in support of Assembly Bill 1460 (AB1460) as a member of the CSU Ethnic Studies Council. The bill, which added an ethnic studies requirement to all CSUs, was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in August 2020.

“I have been very vocal in support of AB 1460 and have been actively engaged in that work since I’ve been at CSUDH” she says. “Once it passed, I helped conceptualize the creation of the Ethnic Studies Implementation Committee for our campus.”

Nicol has also been sharing her message outside the campus, appearing at speaking engagements as an ethnic studies scholar. She recently spoke at CSU Channel Islands as part of their Ethnic Studies Speakers Series. “We’re doing more cross-collaborations, and are ramping up systemwide programming, so we can share the work that we’re doing instead of just keeping it in-house.”

For the past year, Nicol has also been serving as co-chair of the Anti-Racism Task Force. Created in the wake of the George Floyd murder and ensuing protests, they have been tasked with examining how the university is working to combat anti-black racism and suggesting ways in which CSUDH can more closely live up to its social justice ideals.

“Right now, we’re engaged in a campus-wide survey,” says Nicol. “Then we’re going to use that survey to create focus groups to find out people’s buy-in to the list of demands that Africana Studies has put together. We want to present some of them as recommendations to the cabinet, but we want to get some stakeholder feedback before we do all of that. It’s been a longer process than we had anticipated.”

Nicol is optimistic that the task force will be a catalyst for substantive change and welcomes the increased openness about race and racism that the last year has brought. “People are being more mindful that we need to have conversations about race, ethnicity, gender, and other forms of diversity on our campus.”

However, she cautions, “I think one of the problems on campus is that folks tend to think that since we’re serving these black and brown kids, diversity automatically has occurred. But diversity, if you want to call it that, has to be intentional. Anti-racism must be an intentional, ongoing process. What the task force is trying to do is to give the president’s cabinet a blueprint for what is the priority in terms of these race and ethnicity issues.”

Connecting with the Community

It’s Nicol’s personal connections to the university and the community that make working at CSUDH so special for her. “I think what was really motivating me to come back is that there’s a real opportunity to work with these students who have all of this potential and just need someone to actually give a damn. Someone to care about their well-being academically and emotionally. Dominguez provides that opportunity.”

As chair of Africana Studies, Nicol says that “It is my hope that before I retire, we create an Institute of Black Los Angeles. It would be a repository for the history of Black L.A., and an ongoing preservation of Black L.A.’s history. I have a vision in my head. This is the mark I want to leave for DH, because I think the university is positioned quite well to do that.”

Nicol believes that CSUDH’s acquisition of the Mamie Clayton Collection of African American History and Culture, and establishment of the Georgia and Nolan Payton Archive of Sacred Music are steps in the right direction. “Those collections are going to contribute to having a vibrant academic community on our campus.”

For now, Nicol continues to reach out and build relationships with the community. “I don’t feel that CSUDH is doing enough in terms of its community engagement,” she says. “We should have more partnerships with community organizations around the campus and do more in the City of Carson. Part of the reason I came back is so I could facilitate that, because I know the folks in the community.”

It is for this reason she has organized Rides to the Polls for CSUDH students and staff in 2018, a Virtual Voter Education and Mobilization Forum in 2020, a community webinar on domestic violence in the African American community, in addition to facilitating workshops on implicit bias, understanding Black Lives Matter, and upending anti-black racism for area non-profit organizations and schools.

“In order to build these partnerships in the community, you really need to have people who are from the community, who can communicate what they need while balancing the interests of the institution,” says Nicol. “A lot of my service is to let people know, ‘Hey, there are scholars at Dominguez Hills’ who have expertise that can be of service and value to the community.”

Faculty Highlights: March 2021

March 24, 2021 By Paul Browning

Our faculty members participate in conferences around the world, conduct groundbreaking research, and publish books and journal papers that contribute to their field and highlight their expertise. We feature those accomplishments and more in this section. To share faculty news, email ucpa@csudh.edu.

College Arts and Humanities

Nancy ErbeNancy Erbe, professor of Negotiation, Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding (NCRP), co-edited the book “Preventing and Reducing Violence in Schools and Society,” a collection of innovative research on the evolution and implementation of nonviolence concepts within social settings in order to prevent oppression and violence among global communities. The book explores the effective diffusion of violence through masterful negotiation and mediation skills, as well as mentoring, counseling, and related processes. The book includes CSUDH Alumni Luca Dal Pubel, who wrote “Resolving Conflicts and Preventing Violence in Italian Schools,” and Giuseppina Wright, who contributed “How to Create a Sustainable Nonviolence Curriculum in Public Schools in Sweden: A Case Study.” Anthony Normore, CSUDH professor emeritus of School Leadership in Graduate Education, and Brian Jarrett, professor and NCRP department chair  wrote “Restorative Approaches to Honoring Human Dignity and Transforming Urban Schools.”

 

 

Salim Faraji, professor of Africana Studies, has joined a team of scholars to establish the William Leo Hansberry Society, which is dedicated to making the study of the Nile Valley and Northeast African cultures more inclusive to scholars of African descent.

 

 

 

Donna J. NicolDonna J. Nicol, associate professor and chair of Africana Studies, recently published the article, “Activism for Profit: America’s ‘Anti-Affirmative Action Industry” for Al Jazeera Digital. The article explores how heavily funded non-profits work to unveil “problems” with policies that increase diversity obstruct equal opportunities and racial equity in the United States.

 

 

 

Brad HollisterBrad Hollister, assistant professor of computer science, has published the book “Core Blender Development: Understanding the Essential Source Code.”  Blender is an open-source 3D modeling and rendering software package used in the production of assets for animated projects, 3D printing, games, and even scientific visualization. Hollister’s book enables readers to learn the essential source code of Blender and its unique build system by providing the inner workings of the Blender C-based source code.

University Library

Carolyn Caffrey GardnerCarolyn Caffrey Gardner, information literacy coordinator/associate librarian, was recently a guest on the Librarian’s Guide to Teaching podcast. She discussed how librarians can incorporate algorithmic literacy education into library instruction. The interview also covered Gardner’s 2019 article, “Teaching Algorithmic Bias in a Credit-Bearing Course.”

 

 

 

 

Recent quotes and/or interviews in the media from faculty

Larry Rosen“Group emails, while helpful for team collaboration, are an increasingly problematic workplace distraction. After the second or third ‘reply all’–when most messages could be directed to just one or two people, rather than everyone–these chains to start to feel oppressive, adding extraneous content to our already overflowing inboxes.” –Larry Rosen, professor emeritus of psychology, was quoted in the eatthis.com article “One Major side Effect of Staring at Your Phone Too Much, Says New Study.”

 

 

Larry Press“Collision avoidance appears to me to be the largest (non-business) mega-constellation hurdle.  Minimizing collisions would require international information sharing and collaboration amongst each civilian and army satellite TV for PC operators, and I don’t see a path to that cooperation.” –Larry Press, professor of information systems. He was interviewed for the Pirate Press article “Critics take aim at Starlink and Kuiper broadband satellites.”

 

 

Sanol Singhal, assistant professor of Biology, was featured in a Knowable Magazine Q&A titled “The weird biology of asexual lizards.” The interview explores all-female species to see what they might reveal about the pros and cons of sex.

Watch Party and Discussion: ‘The Big Picture: A Race for America’

February 14, 2021 By Paul Browning

The Big Picture: A Race for AmericaThe Africana Studies Department is hosting a Zoom watch party and discussion of “The Big Picture: A Race for America,” an Al Jazeera English documentary focused on private funding from foundations and its impact on Black lives through the pandemic, social protests, and politics. The film includes Donna Nicol, associate professor and chair of Africana Studies, who served as an expert panelist during the film. The documentary originally aired as a two-part series earlier this month.

The watch party takes place Feb. 23 from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Join the conversation on Zoom: ID number 840 1223 7375; passcode 007732.

Faculty Highlights: September 2020

October 1, 2020 By Paul Browning

Our faculty members participate in conferences around the world, conduct groundbreaking research, and publish books and journal papers that contribute to their field and highlight their expertise. We feature those accomplishments and more in this section. To share faculty news, email ucpa@csudh.edu.

College of Arts and Humanities

Alice Nicholas, lecturer of Africana Studies, published the book “Reflections of an Africologist: 10 Million Stories,” (volume 9) in August. Nicholas has written numerous books from the “10 Million Stories” series, a collection she created in 1999.

 

 

 

 

In August, Salim Faraji, professor of Africana Studies, presented “Athanasius and Ancient Egyptian Metaphysics: Forging Christology, Creed and Canon” during the 21st St. Shenouda-UCLA Conference of Coptic Studies.

 

 

 

 

Donna Nicol, associate professor and chair of Africana Studies, has published the article “Conservative Philanthropy’s War on Ethnic and Gender Studies in U.S. Higher Education,” in June on the website HistPhil.org.

 

 

 

 

Edward Robinson, lecturer of Africana Studies, served as a workshop facilitator for the 3-part fall webinar “Becoming an Anti-Racist Educator,” which is taking place at CSU Fullerton in September-November 2020.

 

 

 

 

 

College of Extended and International Education

Matthew Luckett, HUX program coordinator, has published the book “Never Caught Twice: Horse Stealing in Western Nebraska, 1850 – 1890.” The book presents the untold history of horse raiding and stealing on the Great Plains of western Nebraska by and from four Plains groups – American Indians, the U.S. Army, ranchers and cowboys, and farmers.

 

 

 

 

Recent quotes and/or interviews in the media from faculty

“There’s this term that’s kind of gone out into the lexicon of ‘performative allyship,’ where you perform it, but you don’t necessarily interrogate your own racist ideas or you’re just trying to show that you’re not racist, but you’re not trying to undo racism. I’m particularly interested in … the uses and abuses of performative allyship, where folks – particularly in this current moment – are using performance to demonstrate how concerned they are about Black Lives Matter and George Floyd and these issues, when they’ve been silent up to this point.”  – Donna Nicol, associate professor and chair of Africana Studies, was interviewed for the Random Lengths News article “Netflix and Faux Allyship.”

In September, Donna Nicol was also a featured guest along with Jennifer A. Yee, professor of Asian American Studies at CSU Fullerton, for the Fresh Off the VOTE Podcast segment “Caring in a World That Doesn’t Care.” The educators addressed the question, “What is radical about radical self-care and how is it different from good old consumerism?”

Emeritus Professor of Psychology Larry Rosen, and his research on the psychology of technology, was referenced in two articles on the subject of surviving  time at home during COVID-19: Men’s Health, “5 Painless Ways to Drink and Snack Less” and Forge.com “5 Healthy Ways to Immediately Slow Down Your Life.”

 

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