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15TH ANNUAL DU BOIS LECTURE
NEWS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATE: 02/12/09
CONTACT: LESLIE SCHALER, COMMUNICATIONS ASST., (413) 545-0162
UMASS AMHERST LIBRARIES HOSTS 15TH ANNUAL DU BOIS LECTURE
~ A Talk by Howard Dodson ~
Chief of New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Amherst, MA - The UMass Amherst Libraries hosts the 15th Annual Du Bois Lecture, by Howard Dodson, Thursday, February 26, 2009 at 6:30 p.m., in the Special Collections Reading Room, Floor 25, Du Bois Library, UMass Amherst. Howard Dodson is the Chief of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library.
A scholar, historian, educator, curator, consultant, and lecturer, Howard Dodson, has committed his professional life to the retrieval, preservation, interpretation, and dissemination of the history and culture of African and African American peoples.
Since 1984, Dodson has served as chief of the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the world's leading and most prestigious repository for materials and artifacts on black cultural life. Under Dodson's leadership, the Schomburg Center has developed into the world's most comprehensive public research library devoted exclusively to documenting and interpreting African diasporan and African history and culture.
Dodson's books include Becoming American: The African American Journey (Sterling Publishing, Inc., 2009), In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience (National Geographic Press, 2004), Jubilee: The Emergence of African-American Culture (National Geographic Press, 2002), and The Black New Yorkers: Four Hundred Years of African American History (Wiley, 2000).
Dodson received his master's degree in history and political science at Villanova University in 1964 and completed the requirements for an ABD at the University of California at Berkeley in 1974 in Black History and Race Relations. He went on to become the Director of the Institute of the Black World, the research arm of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta from 1974 to 1979. He has been awarded Honorary Doctorates of Humane Letters by: Widener University (1987); Adelphi University (May 2004); West Chester University of Pennsylvania (June 2005); The City College of New York (June 2006), and an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Villanova University (May 2007).
For more information on Howard Dodson: http://biography.jrank.org/pages/2744/Dodson-Howard-Jr.html.
For more information about the lecture contact Robert Cox, Special Collections and University Archives, (413) 545-6842 or rscox@library.umass.edu.
This event is sponsored by the UMass Amherst Libraries' Special Collections and University Archives Department and is free and open to the public.
The Library marks Du Bois' birthday each year with a lecture by a distinguished scholar on a topic relating to Du Bois' life and legacy.
The Library was named for W.E.B. Du Bois in 1994 and is home to the extensive Du Bois Papers.
Last Edited: 19 February 2009
