John K. Marah

"Perceptions of Blackness"

Wednesday, February 23, 2011
4:30pm

Gowen Room
Wilson Commons

Dr. Kali Gross, Drexel University

"Deciphering the Depraved: Race, Gender, and Bloody Murder in Philadelphia, 1887"

Thursday, February 9, 2011
4:30-6:00pm

Gamble Room
Rush Rhees Library

THE DEPARTMENT OF RELIGION AND CLASSICS
AND THE FREDERICK DOUGLASS INSTITUTE
PRESENT

The Life of William Sanders Scarborough and His Friendship with Frederick Douglass

Professor Michele Valerie Ronnick
Wayne State University
Thursday 2 December 5 PM
Gowen Room, Wilson Commons

William Sanders Scarborough was born into slavery in Macon, Georgia. Through his studies, particularly in Classics and ancient Greek, he went on to become a leading voice for African Americans in higher education in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was president of Wilberforce University in Ohio, he was the first African American member of the Modern Language Association, and he was one of the first African American members of the American Philological Association.

Image courtesy of the Rembert E. Stokes Library, Wilberforce University, Wilberforce, Ohio

Thursday, February 25, 2010
12:30-2:00pm Hawkins Carlson Room, Rush Rhees Library
Juliana Nfah-Abbenyi, Writer and Scholar
North Carolina State University

"Of Wayfarers and Ghosts: Representations of African Americans in African Literary Imagination"

Juliana Nfah-Abbenyi, is a scholar of African literature as well as a creative writer. Her publications include Gender in African women’s writing : identity, sexuality, and difference (Indiana UP 1997), Your Madness not mine, stories of Cameroon (Ohio UP 1999) and The Sacred door and other stories : Cameroon folktales of the Beba (Ohio UP 2008). Nfah-Abbenyi has published numerous articles and book chapters that bring together both African (anglophone and francophone) and diasporic African literary traditions. Her lecture explores the complexities that surround the representation of the African-American exprience in the African imagination.

Thursday, April 22, 2010
4:30-6:00pm, Welles-Brown Room Rush Rhees Library
Ambroise Kom, Prof & Eleanor Howard O'Leary Chair in Francophone Studies, College of the Holy Cross
"Born Again in Paris: Chester Himes in the Francophone Imagination"

Ambroise Kom is the author of many books including La Malédiction francophone (2000), Le Harlem de Chester Himes (1978) Georges Laming et le destin des Caraïbes (1986). He is also the editor of two volumes of the Dictionnaire des œuvres littéraires négro-africaines de langue française (1983 and 1996) and editor of Présence francophone. Kom has also edited Remember Mongo Beti (2003). Starting with the reinvention of Chester Himes’s detective novels by francophone parisian authors, Kom’s talk will also explore the impact of the African-American cultural traditions and political leaders in the Francophone imagination.