Dr. Iyelli Ichile

Assistant Professor, African American Studies

Contact information

1000 W Franklin Street, rm 104
PO Box 842509
Richmond, VA 23284-2509
(804) 828-1384
iihanks@vcu.edu

Education

PhD (2011) in History of the African Diaspora, Howard University

Biographical statement

Iyelli Ichile received her PhD in African Diaspora History from Howard University and her Master of Arts in African American Studies from Columbia University. During her graduate studies, Iyelli held an internship at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and at the South African Research and Archival Project—which provided her with the opportunity to do research at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa. She is a member of the National Council for Black Studies (NCBS), the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History (ASALH), and the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD).

Research interests

African Resistance to Slavery Across the Americas; Maroonage/Cimarronaje; Africana Spiritual Traditions; Africana Musical Traditions; Representations of Black Folk Culture in American Film, Fiction and Folklore; Cultural Pan-Africanisms, Gender and Womanhood in the African Diaspora; Black Feminisms.

Representative publications

Ichile, Iyelli. “Sister Warrior: Akan Women in Organized Resistance to Slavery” in Glenn
Chambers and Quito Swan (eds.) Intellectual Maroonage: An African Diaspora Reader. Palgrave MacMillan (under review)

Hanks, Iyelli Ichile. "D.C.'s Black Music: Inside and Out” in Elizabeth Clark-Lewis (ed.)
Synergy: Public History at Howard University. Washington: A P Foundation Press, 2011.

“One Nation Under a Groove: A people’s history of the drum.” Souls, 8:3 (Winter 2006).

Recent courses