Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (left) and Robin M. Boylorn (right)
Each year, the Women and Gender Studies and the African and African American Studies Programs at George Mason University sponsor the Sojourner Truth Lecture Series during the spring to honor both Black African Heritage History Month and Women’s History Month.
This year’s event features two speakers, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Robin M. Boylorn, who are scholars, activists and award-winning authors.
Taylor is an assistant professor in the department of African American studies at Princeton University. She is the author of “From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation” and “How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective,” which won the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for LBGTQ Nonfiction.
Taylor’s upcoming book, “Race for Profit: Black Homeownership and the End of the Urban Crisis,” explores the federal government’s promotion of single-family homeownership in black communities after the urban rebellions of the 1960s.
Boylorn is assistant professor of interpersonal and intercultural communication studies at the University of Alabama. Her areas of research include communication and culture, organizational communication and interpersonal communication. Her interest in researching the lives of black women came from a realization that black women, particularly those in the rural South, were underrepresented in the body of research she was using in her class projects.
She is the author of “Sweetwater: Black Women and Narratives of Resilience,” a multigenerational story of growing up black and female in the rural South.
The lecture will take place on the Fairfax Campus in the Johnson Center’s Dewberry Hall on Tuesday, March 5, at 4:30 p.m.
The event is sponsored by the Women and Gender Studies Program; the African and African American Studies Program; the Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Multicultural Education and LGBTQ Resources; University Life; the Higher Education Program; the Interdisciplinary Curriculum Collaborative; and American Evolution.
Last year’s Sojourner Truth lecturer was Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin, who has dedicated her life to transforming family tragedy into social change.