NEWS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE               DATE: 2/26/07 CONTACT : LESLIE SCHALER, COMMUNICATION ASST., (413) 545-0162   UMASS AMHERST LIBRARIES HOSTS 13TH ANNUAL DU BOIS LECTURE   “THE UNSPOKEN DU BOIS:   W.E.B. DU BOIS AND THE FUTURE OF BLACK STUDIES IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY”   Amherst, MA – The UMass Amherst Libraries hosts the 13th Annual Du Bois Lecture, “The Unspoken Du Bois: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Future of Black Studies in the Twenty-First Century,” by James Turner, Tuesday, March 6, 2007, 5:30 p.m., Cape Cod Lounge, Student Union, UMass Amherst.  The event, sponsored by the UMass Amherst Libraries’ Special Collections and University Archives Department, is free and open to the public. The Library marks Du Bois' birthday each year with a special event. James Turner is the founder of Africana Studies and Research Center and professor of African and African American Politics and Social Policy at Cornell University.  He also organized Cornell's Council on African Studies, forming a basis for the university's interdisciplinary African Studies. Turner initiated the term "Africana Studies" to conceptualize the comprehensive study of the African Diaspora and the three primary global Black communities-Africa, North America, and the Caribbean. The Africana paradigm is now widely adopted by educational programs as the epistemology for the field of Black studies. Turner was a founding member of TransAfrica, an African American lobbying organization. During the 1970s, he was a national organizer of the Southern Africa Liberation Support Committee, which pressed the anti-apartheid campaign in the United States.  In 1974, he served as chair of the North American delegation to the Sixth Pan African Congress, and in 1973, he co-chaired the International Congress of Africanists in Ethiopia. As a Schomburg Research Fellow at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Turner conducted research on the political philosophy of Malcolm X that served as the basis for his work on the prize-winning PBS series Eyes on the Prize.  The recipient of the Association of Black Sociologists' Award of Distinction, he has served as president of the African Heritage Studies Association and on the editorial boards of several leading Black Studies journals. Turner holds a B.S. from Central Michigan University, an M.A. from Northwestern University, a certificate in African Studies from Northwestern's African Studies Center, and a Ph.D. from the Union Graduate School in Cincinnati. For more information contact Robert Cox, Special Collections and University Archives, (413) 545-6842.