Dr. Anastasia Curwood, "Shirley Chisholm and Black Feminist Power Politics" and the 10th Annual American Studies Conference

The American Studies, Black Studies, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Programs are pleased to announce Dr. Anastasia Curwood, Professor of History and Director of the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies at the University of Kentucky will join us to deliver the Black Studies Annual Lecture and the WGSS Capstone and the 10^th Annual American Studies Conference keynote address. Her lecture, “Shirley Chisholm and Black Feminist Power Politics,” will take place in person on March 2, 2023, 6:30-8pm in Alumni House. Refreshments will be provided, and lecture is free and open to the public. 

Reception to follow from 8–9pm featuring the Brian Torff Blues Band.

 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 Celebration Committee. 

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.

Held in conjunction with this event is the 10^th Annual American Studies Conference, which will host panels of undergraduate and graduate students on the theme of “American Power and Politics in Public/Private.”  Student panels will be held on March 1 in Alumni House from 5:30-8:00 pm.

Both events are free and open to the public.

For more information please contact Dr. Lydia Willsky-Ciollo (lciollo@fairfield.edu), Dr. Shannon Kelley (skelley@fairfield.edu), and Dr. Shannon King (sking2@fairfield.edu).