Six-time author and Princeton University Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies Imani Perry, PhD, JD will share her profound insight and scholarly analysis of the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality during her upcoming lecture, “We Who Believe in Freedom: From Analysis to Action,” on Monday, March 23, 2020, at 6 p.m. in the Aloysius P. Kelley, S.J., Center presentation room. The event is free and open to the public, and presented by the College of Arts and Sciences’ programs in Black Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Dr. Perry’s keynote will draw from two of her acclaimed monographs, Vexy Thing: On Gender and Liberation (2018), and More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States (2011), to bring complicated and timely issues of race and gender to the foreground of interdisciplinary exploration. In Vexy Thing, she explores past and present examples of “patriarchy” and transforms its critique through a social and literary analysis of a wide spectrum of sources, including works by Toni Morrison and Audre Lorde, art by Kara Walker and Wangechi Mutu, and slavery court cases from the 19^th Century. In More Beautiful and More Terrible, she investigates “the embrace and transcendence of racial inequality in the U.S.” and challenges the claim that the country is “post-racial,” as she examines law, policy, art, and culture.

Fairfield University Black Studies Program Director Kris Sealey, PhD, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program Director Johanna Garvey, PhD, invited Dr. Perry to deliver their programs’ respective keynotes because her work centers on the fields of black studies and women, gender, and sexuality studies in questions that are both pressing and relevant for today’s scholars, students, and global citizens.

“In both teaching and research at Fairfield, we value interdisciplinary scholarship and scholarship that is committed to social justice,” Dr. Sealey explained. “Dr. Perry’s works are model examples of both, and it is our hope that her keynote address will be a call for us to utilize our various gifts to dare to imagine a better and more just world, and to join with others to build such a world.”

Dr. Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and a faculty associate with the programs in Law and Public Affairs, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Jazz Studies. She earned a PhD in American Studies from Harvard University, a JD from Harvard Law School, a BA from Yale College, and an LLM from Georgetown University Law Center. She is the author of six books, including Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, which received the Pen Bograd Weld Award for Biography, The Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award for outstanding work in literary scholarship, and the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction; and May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem, winner of the 2019 American Studies Association John Hope Franklin Book Award for the best book in American Studies, the Hurston Wright Award for Nonfiction, and finalist for an NAACP Image Award in Nonfiction.

Copies of Dr. Perry’s latest book, Breathe, will be available for purchase and signing following her lecture.

The event is co-sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences, Peace and Justice Studies program, Philosophy Department, Politics Department, History Department, English Department, MFA in Creative Writing program, Visual and Performing Arts Department, Pre-Law Program, Honors Program, American Studies Program, the Office of Student Diversity and Multicultural Affairs, and the Sociology and Anthropology Department. For more information contact Dr. Sealey at ksealey@fairfield.edu or Dr. Garvey at JKGarvey@fairfield.edu.