2006 Fellows

CHERYL LYNN BRUCE
Inaugural Spring 2006 Fellow
As the first Fellow of the Institute, actor, director, and writer Cheryl Lynn Bruce researched and investigated the life, work, and historical times of the poet and slave Phillis Wheatley as the base of a staged production she will author and produce.  She spent a month on campus researching and writing, meeting with students and faculty, as well as working closely with the Institute Research Assistant in support of the work’s development. 

Cheryl Lynn Bruce, writer, director, and actor, was recently on Steppenwolf's stage in Intimate Apparel, and she appeared in The Story at Milwaukee Repertory Theatre. Last season she premiered in Lookingglass Theatre's Race. She also appeared in Mary Zimmerman's production of Trojan Women at Goodman Theatre. Ms. Bruce's work in The Voice of Good Hope at Victory Gardens received a Best Actress Jeff Nomination. She played Bertha in August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone at Missouri Repertory, and in 1999 traveled to Graz, Austria to perform works by Suzan-Lori Parks at the famous Steirischer Herbst Arts Festival. Cheryl created the role of Elizabeth Sandry for Steppenwolf Theatre's Tony-winning production of The Grapes of Wrath. She has performed in regional theatres around the country including BAM, Chicago Theatre Company, Circle-in-the-Square, Crossroads Theatre, Hartford Stage, Huntington Theatre, Kennedy Center, Northlight Theatre, Remains Theatre and Shakespeare Repertory, as well as Broadway and Off-Broadway houses. Her direction of Congo Square Theatre's 2001 production of From the Mississippi Delta garnered both the African American Arts Alliance and Black Theatre Alliance awards for Best Direction. In 2003 she directed Spunk, the young company's season opener. Film credits include: Daughters of the Dust, Music Box, The Fugitive, The Second Voyage of Mimi. Television credits: Oprah Winfrey's There are No Children Here, To Sir with Love II and Separate but Equal with Sidney Poitier and Crime of Innocence.

STEPHANIE SHONEKAN
Winter Faculty 2006 Fellow
Columbia College Chicago faculty member Stephanie Shonekan, Director of the Black World Studies Department at Columbia College was the Winter 2006 Institute Faculty Fellow.  She is working on the development of her screenplay/musical Lioness of Lisabi about the life of women’s rights activist Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, the mother of Nigerian afrobeat creator and artist, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.

Shonekan, Ph.D. is professor of Humanities and Cultural Studies and director of the Black World Studies Minor at Columbia College Chicago. She earned her bachelors and masters in Nigeria and her doctorate in Ethnomusicology from Indiana University Bloomington. Shonekan’s intertwined Nigerian and Trinidadian heritage inspires her research investigations into the literary, musical, and cultural parallels that exist between Africa and the African Diaspora.  Specifically, she researches and teaches classes on the Black Arts Movement in the US and abroad, Harlem Renaissance, Contemporary African Life, Literature and Music, and Global Hip-Hop Culture, among other topics. Shonekan’s manuscript, Madam Butterfly: The Life of Camilla Williams Soprano, which is an offshoot from her dissertation, is currently in the review process at press.  Shonekan has now turned her research attention to the revolutionary and musical influence of Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti on her son, Fela Anikulapo Kuti.