The Fourth SOSACRU Summer School 2024
A program of academic study and community knowledge building
Sunday 21st July – Monday 29th July 2024, Jamaica
This year, our summer school seeks to connect students who might have watched the recent Bob Marley biopic, One Love, to the Rastafari movement – the inheritors of Marcus Garvey and his famous Pan-Africanist vision. We will visit Rastafari communities in the Jamaica space, and as we do so, instructors will draw out both the Garveyite inheritance of these spaces and the way in which Bob Marley’s story connects to these inheritances. The Summer School will begin in Montego Bay before making its way to the University of West Indies Mona campus in Kingston, which will provide accommodation for students and faculty.
The School of the Sacrament Ras Tafari University (SOSACRU) is livicated to the study of Ras Tafari as an African sociological ethos, inclusive of culture, economic sustainability, and spirituality. Our programs prioritize the knowledge of Ras Tafari as a way of life with instruction and teaching modules that support holistic standards of living, spiritual practices, including Ras Tafari rituals, and African-centred medicinal herbal usage (sacraments). We are aligned to an academic community of Ras Tafari scholars who are grounded in community development, social justice activism, and the shaping of new paradigm thinking.
Previous SOSACRU summer schools have taken place in Jamaica, St Lucia, and online. Students have participated from Howard, Morehouse, and Johns Hopkins universities. Partnerships have included: the Center for Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University; The Smithsonian, IDOR Inc. (DC/Baltimore), Mount Kailash Rejuvenation Centre (St Lucia), Ubuntu Cultural Center (St Lucia); Frontline Books (Chicago) and other community organizations