2020 Toni Morrison Speaker Series
hosted by the Mitchell Community College Equity and Inclusion Council
The Equity and Inclusion Council invites you to attend the first event in our Spring 2020 Toni Morrison Speaker Series, which will be centered on the work of Tony Morrison, who passed away in August 2019.
Morrison was the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the novels Sula, The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved, which are now iconic features of the 20th century American literary canon. Due to her recent passing it seemed appropriate to choose The Bluest Eye as Mitchell’s all-college read for this year.
Lecture #1–Jeffrey Leak, UNC-Charlotte
Tuesday, February 4
12:30-1:30 p.m.
Rotary Auditorium, Statesville Campus
Jeffrey Leak is a faculty member at UNC-Charlotte who specializes in African-American literature, specifically the 20th and 21st century African-American novel. He received his bachelor’s degree from Campbell University, his M.A. from the University of Delaware, and his Ph.D. from Emory University. His books include the following: Visible Man: The Life of Henry Dumas, University of Georgia Press, 2014, Racial Myths and Masculinity in African American Literature, University of Tennessee Press, 2005, and Rac(e)ing to the Right: Selected Essays of George S. Schuyler, University of Tennessee Press, 2001. On the undergraduate level he teaches courses in Twentieth-Century Black autobiography, African American Literature, American Literature from 1820-1865 to the present, masculinity in African American Literature, the Twentieth-Century American novel, African American literary criticism, and the Black family in fiction and film. At the graduate level, he teaches courses in the Twentieth-Century American Novel, race and gender in American Literature, and the literature and culture of the Black Arts Movement.
Lecture #2–Tara Green, UNC-Greensboro
Tuesday, April 7
12:30-1:30 p.m.
Rotary Auditorium, Statesville Campus
Tara T. Green is professor of African American and African Diaspora literature and the Linda Arnold Carlisle Excellence Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies. She received her bachelor’s degree in English from Dillard University in New Orleans and her master’s and doctorate in English, with an emphasis in African American literature, from Louisiana State University. She served as director of AADS from 2008 to 2016. Her research interests include African American autobiographies, twentieth century novels, gender studies, Black southern studies, African literature, and the U.S. Black diaspora. She has published numerous articles and made presentations in these areas of research. Her books include From the Plantation to the Prison: African American Confinement Literature (Mercer UP, 2008), A Fatherless Child: Autobiographical Perspectives of African American Men (U of Missouri P, 2009; winner of 2011 National Council for Black Studies for Outstanding Publication in Africana Studies), Presenting Oprah Winfrey, Her Films, and African American Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and Reimagining the Middle Passage: Black Resistance in Literature, Television, and Song (Ohio UP, 2018). In addition to presenting locally and nationally, she has presented her research in England, the Caribbean, and Africa. Dr. Green is the past president of the Langston Hughes Society and serves on the executive committee of SAMLA.
