I enjoy sharing my work on African and African diaspora arts with broad and diverse audiences. Since 1970 I have given many public lectures on a wide range of topics in both academic and non-academic settings. Many of these presentations are slide-lectures but I often show films/videos, play music, or demonstrate carving techniques learned from my Yoruba masters, sculptors Shanusi and Ogundipe in Nigeria. These are more like multi-media performances.

Examples of a few titles and themes include the following:

• “Striking Iron: The Artistry of African Blacksmiths”
• “The Odyssey of an Image: Circus Snake Charmer becomes African Water Goddess!”
• “Soulful Stitching: The Patchwork Quilts of Africans (Siddis) in India”
• “African Art: The Shapes of Thought”
• “Nine Centuries of Yoruba Art and Thought”
• “Beads, Body, and Soul: Bead Artistry among the Yoruba in Africa and the Americas”
• “Yoruba Performance Arts”
• “Whirling Return of the Ancestors: Egungun Masquerades among the Yoruba”
• “Beauty and Being: Yoruba Body Arts”
• “Flaming Crowns, Cooling Waters: Masquerade Performances of the Ijebu-Yoruba”
• “African Artistry: A Yoruba Master Sculptor at Work”
• “Mermaids, Snake Charmers, and Saints: Images and Ideas of Mami Wata and Other African Water Spirits”
• “Carnival Arts of the African Diaspora”
• “Signifyin' Saints: Afro-Brazilian Arts, Culture, and Resistance”
• “Arts, Identities, and Agency in Afro-Brazilian Culture”
• “Amazing Grace: Art and Architecture of African Indians (Siddis), 1400 to the Present”
• “Come to Your Senses: Sensiotics and Understandings of Yoruba Arts in Africa and Beyond”

Please contact me for more information.