PORT ANGELES — “Lorraine Hansberry’s American Radicalism” will be presented by Erin Chapman, associate professor at George Washington University, during Peninsula College’s Studium Generale from 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 8.
The lecture and discussion will be at zoom.us/j/95156136928. The meeting ID is 951 5613 6928.
Kate Reavey, Peninsula College English instructor and coordinator for Studium Generale, attended a lecture by Chapman that focused on African American Women in the Suffrage Movement.
“This is the 100th anniversary of Women’s Suffrage, and I was so inspired by Dr. Chapman’s work and her focus on Ida B. Wells and other important leaders that I invited her to present in Studium Generale,” Reavey said.
Chapman’s presentation will focus not on suffrage but on the author, Lorraine Hansberry, and Reavey has reached out to English composition and literature faculty to encourage curricular tie-ins.
“This is an excellent opportunity for our students and our communities,” she said.
Chapman is the author of “Prove It On Me: New Negroes, Sex, and Popular Culture in the 1920s” and a range of book chapters and articles.
These include a chapter on the New Negro Renaissance in Keywords for African American Studies and “Staging Gendered Radicalism at the Height of the U.S. Cold War: A Raisin in the Sun and Lorraine Hansberry’s Vision of Freedom,” published in the August 2017 issue of Gender & History.
She is currently drafting a biography of Lorraine Hansberry to be published by Oxford University Press.
Chapman is associate professor of history at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She holds a bachelor’s in history from Stanford University and a master’s and Ph.D. in African American Studies and History from Yale University.
Chapman is a historian of gender politics and radicalism in the 20th century black freedom movement.
Her research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the American Association of University Women, the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University and the American Council of Learned Societies.