Saturday, May 14, 2022 | Davis Field Tent
The Class of 2022 African American Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Awards Ceremony and Graduation Celebration will take place on Saturday, May 14, 2022 at 2pm in Tent A on Davis Field.
The Practice of Freedom: Nellie Y. McKay and the Rise of Black Literary Studies
February 16, 2022 | 3:30pm ET | ZSR Library Auditorium
Shanna Greene Benjamin is a biographer and scholar who studies the literature, lives, and archives of Black women. Dr. Benjamin earned her Ph.D. in English and M.A. in Afro-American Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She received her B.A. in English from Johnson C. Smith University—a historically Black college in Charlotte, North Carolina. Former Associate Dean and Professor of English at Grinnell College, Dr. Benjamin has published on African American literature and Black women’s intellectual history in African American Review, MELUS, a/b: Auto/Biography, Studies in American Fiction, and PMLA. Her book, Half in Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Nellie Y. McKay (UNC Press 2021), examines McKay’s path through the professoriate to map how Black feminist scholars impacted the development of Black literary studies as a discipline, revealing the strategies, sacrifices, and successes of contemporary Black women in the American academy.
Ellisonianism
February 10, 2022 | 4:00pm ET via Zoom
On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the publication of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of English and History Lawrence P. Jackson will deliver a public lecture titled “Ellisonianism.”
The event is free and open to the public. Registration is required.
The Global Dimensions of Black History
February 2, 2022 | POSTPONED
Omar H. Ali is Dean of Lloyd International Honors College and Professor of Global and Comparative African Diaspora History at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The author of five books, including Malik Ambar: Power and Slavery Across the Indian Ocean (Oxford University Press) and In the Lion’s Mouth: Black Populism in the New South (University Press of Mississippi), he was named the Carnegie Foundation North Carolina Professor of the Year in 2016 and Knight in the Order of the Academic Palms by the French Government in 2021. A graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science, he received his Ph.D. in History from Columbia University.
"The Fierce Urgency of Now": Climate Change, Environmental Justice, and the Fate of Democracy
January 17, 2022 | 12:00pm ET via Zoom
Join Wake Forest Professor of the Humanities Corey D. B. Walker for a public conversation with environmental justice activists and organizers Kendyl Crawley Crawford and Dr. Faith B. Harris, co-directors of Virginia Interfaith Power and Light, on January 17, 2022, at 12:00 noon via Zoom. Free and open to the public. Registration required.
First Day of Spring Semester Classes
January 10, 2022
"Democratic Faith: Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Danger of Political Pessimism" | A Public Lecture by Prof. Melvin L. Rogers, Brown University
November 30, 2021 | 3:30pm DeTamble Auditorium, Tribble Hall
Melvin L. Rogers, Associate Professor of Political Science and director of Graduate Studies in the department of Political Science at Brown University, will deliver a public lecture, “Democratic Faith: Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Danger of Political Pessimism,” on Tuesday, November 30, 2021 at 3:30pm in DeTamble Auditorium in Tribble Hall.
This lecture is sponsored the Program in African American Studies and the Department of Politics and International Affairs.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
"Understanding Wealth Inequality in America" | A Public Lecture by Prof. William A. Darity, Jr., Duke University
November 10, 2021 | 3:30pm ET Pugh Auditorium
William A. Darity Jr., Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics and the director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University, will deliver a public lecture, “Wealth Inequality in America,” on Wednesday, November 10, 2021 at 3:30pm in Pugh Auditorium in the Benson University Center.
This lecture is sponsored by the Department of Economics, Office of the Dean of the College, Program in African American Studies, Slavery, Race, and Memory Project, and Wake Forest University Humanities Institute.
Conversations in Black Studies: Claudrena N. Harold, University of Virginia
November 7, 2021 | 12:00pm ET via Zoom
Join Wake Forest Professor of the Humanities and director of African American Studies Corey D. B. Walker for a public conversation with University of Virginia Edward Stettinius Professor of History and chair of the Corcoran Department of History Claudrena N. Harold.
Free and open to the public. Registration required.