List of Past Lectures
2008 (October 2)
Walter Mosley
WALTER MOSLEY is the author of twenty-nine critically acclaimed
books which have been translated into twenty-one languages. His
popular mysteries featuring Easy Rawlins began with Devil in
a Blue Dress in 1990. Others in the series include A Red
Death, White Butterfly, Black Betty, and A
Little Yellow Dog (both of which were New York Times
bestsellers). Recently, Easy Rawlins has returned in Bad Boy
Brawly Brown, Six Easy Pieces, Little Scarlet
and Cinnamon Kiss, a 2006 New York Times bestseller.
Mosley has written five works of literary fiction: RL's Dream;
Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned; Walkin' the Dog;
The Man in My Basement and Fortunate Son; three
works of science fiction, Blue Light, Futureland
and The Wave; and four works of nonfiction, Workin'
on the Chain Gang, What Next, Life out of Context,
and This Year You Write Your Novel. Two movies have been
made from his work: Devil in A Blue Dress, starring Denzel
Washington and Always Outnumbered, starring Laurence Fishburne.
He has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including
a Grammy Award, the O'Henry Award, the Sundance Institute Risktaker
Award for his creative and activist efforts, and the Anisfield
Wolf Award, an honor given to works that increase the appreciation
and understanding of race in America.
Mosley created, along with The City College, a new Publishing
Degree Program aimed at young urban residents. It is the only
such program in the country. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he
now lives in Brooklyn.
2008 (April 15)
Yvonne Seon
"The Importance of Africana Studies Programs"
Dr. Yvonne Seon is a renowned and respected innovator and administrator
of Africana studies programs. She earned a B.A. degree from Allegheny
University and an M.A. degree in American government and politics
as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at American University. After living
and working in the Congo shortly after its independence in 1961,
Dr. Seon continued her studies at Union Institute, where she earned
perhaps the first doctorate in African and African-American studies,
a program she helped design. Dr. Seon is the founding director
of the Bolinga Black Cultural Resources Center at Wright State
University, where she returned in 2005 to serve as Distinguished
Visiting Director. She was again appointed to direct the program
in 2006, the same year she retired as Professor of African-American
Studies in the History Department at Prince George’s Community
College, Largo, Maryland. Dr. Seon has also taught black studies
at University of Maryland at College Park, Wilberforce University,
and Howard University. While raising three children, she earned
an M.Div. from Howard University Divinity School and was the first
African-American woman ordained as a Unitarian Universalist minister.
Deeply committed to others, Dr. Seon is on the Board of Directors
of Africare, a private voluntary organization specializing in
African development. She recently wrote Totem Games, a
poetic exploration of her search for African identity.
2007
Colson Whitehead
"Becoming a New York Writer"
The following bio was current
at the time of the lecture: Colson Whitehead's first novel The
Intuitionist won the Quality Paperback Book Club's New Voices
Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway. The book concerned
intrigue in the Department of Elevator Inspectors in a major metropolis.
John Henry Days, an investigation of the legendary folk
hero, came out in 2001 and won the Young Lions Award, the Anisfield-Wolf
Book Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The
Colossus of New York is a collection of impressionistic essays
about the city. The question was, "What makes this place
tick?" It was published in 2003. Whitehead's writing has
appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine,
Granta, Harper's and Salon. He has been the
recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Whiting Award. The novel
Apex Hides the Hurt concerns identity, history, and the
adhesive bandage industry.
2006
Tom Kerr
"Prison U: How the Late Tookie Williams and Other Incarcerated
Writers are Teaching Us"
The following bio was current at
the time of Tom Kerr's lecture: Formerly Director of Writing at
L.I.U.'s Brooklyn Campus, Tom Kerr is an Assistant Professor of
Writing and Rhetoric in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College.
He was active in the media campaign to win clemency for Tookie
Williams and is currently shopping Steve Champion's San Quentin
death row memoir, One Day Deep: Meditations on Death Row,
which he and a former student have edited over the last three
years. Tom believes America's incarcerated writers, published
and unpublished, have much to teach us. His commentaries have
appeared in the online edition of Counterpunch, the Syracuse
Peace Council Newsletter, and
various newspapers.
2005
Andrew Ross
"Mental Labor, Mental Property"
2004
Ed Bullins
"The Work of a Black Playwright"
2003
Barbara Foley
"The Radical Origins of the Harlem Renaissance"
2002
Nellie McKay
"African American Women
Writers: Legacy & Influence on American Literature"
2001
Edward Said
"American Humanism"
2000
Paul Lauter
"Civil Rights and Literary Study"
1999
Nell Irvin Painter
"Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol"
1998
Deborah McDowell
"Viewing the Remains: Black Funerals/Black Families in Contemporary
Photojournalism"
1996
Ann Douglas
"Finding Mongrel Manhattan of the 1920s"
1995
bell hooks
"Ending Racism: Building Community"
1992
Arnold Rampersad
"Black Writers and the Religions of India"
1991
Houston A. Baker, Jr.
"Hybridity, the Rap Race, and Pedagogy for the 1990s"
1990
Carole Boyce Davies
"The Voices of Others: Black Women's Writing, Third World
Politics, and Feminist Discourses"
1989
Alfred Kazin
"A Creative Town: Foreign Artists and Writers in New York"
1988
Vivian Gornick
"Willa Cather and the American Vision"
1987
Elizabeth Hardwick
[Lecturing on Gertrude Stein]
1985
Denis Donoghue
"America in Theory"
1984
Irving Howe
"Work in American Literature"
1983
Justin Kaplan
". . . And from Hannibal: Whitman and Mark Twain"
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