University Libraries Fall Reception – W. E. B. Du Bois on Film: An Evening with Director Rita Coburn

The University Libraries Annual Fall Reception on September 18, 2026, 6 p.m., in the Bromery Center for the Arts, celebrates the recent PBS documentary film W. E. B. Du Bois: Rebel With A Cause with the film’s director, Rita Coburn. Coburn will be joined by scholars and collaborators Dr. Karida Brown and Dr. Whitney Battle-Baptiste to share how archival discoveries, scholarship, and partnership with the Robert S. Cox Special Collections & University Archives Research Center (SCUA) helped shape this powerful portrait of Du Bois’s life and legacy.  

Rita Coburn is a Peabody-Award-winning director, writer, and producer of radio, television, and film. She began her career as a producer and writer for various news outlets across the U.S., before going on to work as a producer for The Oprah Winfrey Show, Oprah Radio, Apollo Live!, and Walt Disney Productions, among others. In 2016, Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise, co-directed and co-produced by Coburn, premiered at the 2016 Sundance Festival and went on to win a Peabody Award in 2017. Coburn directed Marian Anderson: The Whole World in Her Hands, which premiered nationwide on February 8, 2022, on PBS American Masters. 

Dr. Karida Brown is an NAACP award-winning author, sociologist, professor, oral historian, and public intellectual whose research centers on the fullness of Black life. She is a proud graduate of Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Brown University. Her previous roles include Professor of Sociology at UCLA, the inaugural Director of Racial Equity & Action at the Los Angeles Lakers, and the inaugural Diane Nash Descendants of Emancipation Chair at Fisk University. She currently serves as a Professor of Sociology at Emory University. Dr. Brown is a Fulbright Scholar, and her international research has been supported by national foundations such as the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Hellman Fellows Fund. Brown also served on the board of the Obama Presidency Oral History Project. 

Dr. Brown is the author of six books, including The Sociology of W.E.B. Du Bois and, most recently, The New Brownies’ Book: A Love Letter to Black Families which recently won the 55th NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Literary Work and The Battle for the Black Mind by Legacy Lit. Dr. Brown resides in Atlanta, GA, with her husband, artist Charly Palmer, and their two pugs Blu and Brownie. 

Whitney Battle-Baptiste is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst. A native of the Bronx, New York, Dr. Battle-Baptiste is an activist-scholar who sees the classroom and campus as a space to engage contemporary issues with a sensibility of the past. Her academic training is in Black study, history and historical archaeology.  Her research critically engages the interconnectedness of race, gender, class, and sexuality through an archaeological lens.  Her research sites include Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage Plantation, the Abiel Smith School on Beacon Hill in Boston, the W. E. B. Du Bois Homesite in Great Barrington, MA, and a community-based heritage site at Millars Plantation, on the Bahamian island of Eleuthera. Her books include Black Feminist Archaeology (2011) and W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America (2018), co-edited with Britt Rusert. She is currently completing the second edition of Black Feminist Archaeology with Routledge and co-edited a volume tentatively titled, The New Vanguard: Du Boisian Legacies and the Future of Black Intellectual Thought.

“We are honored to have Rita Coburn and Dr. Brown join Dr. Battle-Baptiste and the Libraries on stage to celebrate the film and the extraordinary life and legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois,” says Curtis Brundy, dean of Libraries. “Their groundbreaking work, scholarship, and dedication have made significant contributions to our understanding of Du Bois and his enduring impact. We are especially grateful for their role in bringing greater attention and insight to one of our most treasured collections, helping to illuminate the breadth and significance of Du Bois’s work for new generations of scholars, students, and the broader community.” 

The event is free and open to all. Registration is required. 

Presented by University Libraries in partnership with the Robert S. Cox Special Collections & University Archives Research Center and the W. E. B. Du Bois Center. Sponsored by the UMass Amherst Foundation and the Fine Arts Center.