Henry Louis Gates, Jr. + Angela Davis
LMU's Global Conversations Series presents
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. + Angela Davis
Thursday, Jan. 19 | 4 p.m.
Bruce Featherston Life Science Building Auditorium
Loyola Marymount University
- About The Event
- About Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
- About Angela Davis
- Event Details
-
LMU's Global Conversations Series presents
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. + Angela DavisProfessors Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Angela Davis will come together at Loyola Marymount University as part of the “Global Conversations Series" to discuss social justice issues, including the range of problems associated with incarceration and the generalized criminalization of communities that are most affected by poverty and racial discrimination. Drawing on their lived experiences, their talk will encapsulate the importance of community for economic, racial, and gender justice.
Organized by:
Marymount Institute for Faith, Culture, and the ArtsProduced by:
John Flaherty and Theresia de VroomSponsored by:
Academy for Catholic Thought and Imagination; LMU Academic Affairs; LMU Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts; Campus Ministry; LMU College of Communication and Fine Arts; Dept. of African American Studies; Dept. of English; Los Angeles Catholic Worker; Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Phi Beta Kappa, LMU Chapter; Office of the Provost; The Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary; LMU School of Film and Television; Student Affairs; Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Center AllianceAbout the Marymount Institute for Faith, Culture, and the Arts
The Marymount Institute for Faith, Culture, and the Arts preserves the transformative educational tradition of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary and promotes dialogue between faith and culture as expressed in the fine, performing, literary, and communication artsAbout Loyola Marymount University
LMU is a private Catholic university with 7,100 undergraduates, 1,700 graduate students and 1,100 law students from diverse backgrounds and many perspectives. Our seven colleges and schools boast best-in-the-nation programs in film and television, business, education and more. Our stunning campus in West Los Angeles is a sun-soaked oasis overlooking the Pacific coast and a model of sustainability. We're rooted in the heart of Los Angeles, a global capital for arts and entertainment, innovation and technology, business and entrepreneurship. Our mission is grounded in a centuries-old Jesuit educational tradition that produces extraordinary men and women dedicated to service and social justice. We're proud of more than 85,000 LMU alumni whose professional achievements are matched by a deep commitment to improving the lives of others.
Photo of Henry Louis Gates Jr. @Judy DaterHenry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, Professor Gates has published numerous books and produced and hosted an array of documentary films. The Black Church (PBS) and Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches (HBO), which he executive produced, have each received Emmy nominations. His latest history series for PBS is Making Black America: Through the Grapevine. Finding Your Roots, Gates’s groundbreaking genealogy and genetics series, is now in its ninth season on PBS.
Gates is a recipient of a number of honorary degrees, including his alma mater, the University of Cambridge. Gates was a member of the first class awarded “genius grants” by the MacArthur Foundation in 1981, and in 1998 he became the first African American scholar to be awarded the National Humanities Medal.
A native of Piedmont, West Virginia, Gates earned his B.A. in History, summa cum laude, from Yale University in 1973, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English Literature from Clare College at Cambridge in 1979, where he is also an Honorary Fellow. A former chair of the Pulitzer Prize board, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and serves on a wide array of boards, including the New York Public Library, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Aspen Institute, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Library of America, and The Studio Museum of Harlem. In 2011, his portrait, by Yuqi Wang, was hung in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. He is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.
Through her activism and scholarship over many decades, Angela Davis has been deeply involved in movements for social justice around the world. Her work as an educator – both at the university level and in the larger public sphere – has always emphasized the importance of building communities of struggle for economic, racial, and gender justice.
Professor Davis’ teaching career has taken her to San Francisco State University, Mills College, and UC Berkeley. She also has taught at UCLA, Vassar, Syracuse University the Claremont Colleges, and Stanford University. Most recently she spent fifteen years at the University of California Santa Cruz where she is now Distinguished Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness – an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program – and of Feminist Studies.
Angela Davis is the author of ten books and has lectured throughout the United States as well as in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America. In recent years a persistent theme of her work has been the range of social problems associated with incarceration and the generalized criminalization of those communities that are most affected by poverty and racial discrimination. She draws upon her own experiences in the early seventies as a person who spent eighteen months in jail and on trial, after being placed on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted List.” She also has conducted extensive research on numerous issues related to race, gender and imprisonment. Her books include Abolition Democracy and Are Prisons Obsolete?, and two books of essays entitled The Meaning of Freedom, and Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement. Her most recent books include a re-issue of Angela Davis: An Autobiography and Abolition. Feminism. Now., with co-authors Gina Dent, Erica Meiners and Beth Richie.
Angela Davis is a founding member of Critical Resistance, a national organization dedicated to the dismantling of the prison industrial complex. Internationally, she is affiliated with Sisters Inside, an abolitionist organization based in Queensland, Australia that works in solidarity with women in prison.
Like many educators, Professor Davis is especially concerned with the general tendency to devote more resources and attention to the prison system than to educational institutions. Having helped to popularize the notion of a “prison industrial complex,” she now urges her audiences to think seriously about the future possibility of a world without prisons and to help forge a 21st century abolitionist movement.
RSVP
Registration for this event is now closed. Please note that this event is free and open to the public, as well as LMU students, faculty, and staff. Seating will be on a first come first served basis. Doors will open at 2:30 p.m., please arrive early to secure a seat. Thank you for your understanding.
SAFETY & SECURITY
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DIRECTIONS
Driving directions to LMU are available. Please use the main LMU entrance at Lincoln and LMU Drive. PDF Campus Map | Interactive Campus Map
PARKING
Please enter campus via Lincoln Boulevard. Parking will be available on levels P2 and P3 of University Hall parking garage, near the entrance of campus from Lincoln Boulevard. We recommend arriving 30 minutes before the start of the presentation to allow time for parking and locating the event.
Please note that LMU charges visitors to park. Pay kiosks are located in each lot. You will need your license plate number to register your vehicle at the kiosk. Parking and rate information is available.