The American Studies, Black Studies, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) programs are pleased to announce Anastasia Curwood, PhD, professor of history and director of the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies at the University of Kentucky will deliver the Black Studies Annual Lecture and the WGSS Capstone and the tenth Annual American Studies Conference keynote address. Her lecture, “Shirley Chisholm and Black Feminist Power Politics,” will take place in-person on Thursday, March 2, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in Alumni House. Refreshments will be provided; the lecture is free and open to the public. Reception to follow from 8–9 p.m. featuring the Brian Torff Blues Band.

“Dr. Curwood’s talk draws from her book, the first-ever comprehensive biography of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to be elected to the United States Congress (1968),” said Shannon Kelley, PhD, associate professor of English at Fairfield and one of the event’s organizers. “Chisholm even ran for president in 1972 and faced down sexism and racism with Black feminist power before many of us were even born. Her life story will inspire everyone.”

Dr. Curwood specializes in the history of African American women, gender, and sexuality, the Black family, and African American intellectual, political, and cultural history in the twentieth century.  Her first book, Stormy Weather: New Negro Marriages Between the Two World Wars (University of North Carolina Press, 2010), centers on the cultural and social contests over African Americans’ marriages in the early twentieth century. Her second book is Shirley Chisholm: Champion of Black Feminist Power Politics (University of North Carolina Press, 2023). She is the recipient of several grants and honors, including a Visiting Fellowship at the James Weldon Johnson Institute for Race and Difference at Emory University, a Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and a Ford Postdoctoral Fellowship.

The American Studies Conference also includes panels of undergraduate and graduate students on the theme of “American Power and Politics in Public/Private.”  Student panels will be held on Wednesday, March 1, in Alumni House from 5:30 to 8 p.m.

Additional co-sponsors of the event are the Politics, History, Sociology & Anthropology, and English departments, as well as the Honors Program and the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Committee. 

Both events are free and open to the public. For more information please contact Dr. Lydia Willsky-Ciollo, Dr. Shannon Kelley, or Dr. Shannon King.