This program examines new biographies bringing us deeper understandings of more familiar freedom fighters like Paul Robeson and less known, but crucial lifelong activists, like Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons. The featured authors in conversation will discuss the power of individual stories to illuminate larger historical crosscurrents:
The conversation will be presented and moderated by the co-curators of Conversations in Black Freedom Studies, Jeanne Theoharis, author of The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, and Robyn C. Spencer-Antoine, author of The Revolution has Come: Black Power, Gender and the Black Panther Party in Oakland.
THE SPEAKERS
Shanna Greene Benjamin is a biographer and scholar who studies the literature, lives, and archives of Black women. Her 2021 book, Half in Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Nellie McKay, reveals the life of the author and scholar best known for coediting the Norton Anthology of African American Literature with Henry Louis Gates Jr. The book won the 2022 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Nonfiction: Memoir/Biography and Honorable Mention for the 2022 William Sanders Scarborough Prize from the Modern Language Association. She has published on African American literature and Black women's intellectual history in African American Review, MELUS, and PMLA, Studies in American Fiction. She is an independent scholar, a coach who helps graduate students and faculty members write what only they can, and a consultant who helps colleges and universities engage with inclusivity as a practice.
Dan Berger is a professor of comparative ethnic studies and associate dean for faculty development and scholarship in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington at Bothell. He is the author of Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power Through One Family’s Journey, which tells the globe-spanning story of Black Power in the 20th century through the lives of grassroots organizers Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons and Michael Simmons. His previous books include Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era, which won the 2015 James A. Rawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians, Remaking Radicalism: A Grassroots Documentary Reader of the United States, 1973-2001, co-edited with Emily Hobson, and Rethinking the American Prison Movement, co-authored with Toussaint Losier. A public scholar, Berger curates the Washington Prison History Project, a multimedia archive of prisoner activism and policy in the state.
Shana L. Redmond is a professor in the department of English and Comparative Literature and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity & Race at Columbia University. She is the author of Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson which received a 2021 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation with the special citation of the Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Award for Criticism. Named a Best Book of 2020 by National Public Radio, Everything Man also received the 2022 Irving Lowens Book Award from the Society for American Music, 2021 Judy Tsou Critical Race Studies Award from the American Musicological Society, 2020 Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title, finalist and honorable mention designations for the Sterling Stuckey Book Prize from the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora, and the inaugural book prize of the Association for the Study of African American Life & History. She is also author of the 2014 book Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora, co-editor of Phono: Black Music and the Global Imagination, and co-editor of and contributor to Critical Ethnic Studies: A Reader.
Patricia Romney is the author of We Were There: The Third World Women’s Alliance and the Second Wave , published by Feminist Press in October 2021. She has authored over 20 articles and papers and co-edited the volume Understanding Power: An Imperative for Human Services. For twenty years she taught at the college level, achieving tenure at Hampshire College where she taught for 10 years. Subsequently she held a 10 year appointment as Visiting Associate Professor of Psychology and Education at Mount Holyoke College. For the past 30 years she has been engaged in dialogue work, large scale diversity initiatives, leadership development and team building, as well as professional coaching of individual faculty and administrators in academia.
