Providers 

February is Black History Month, a commemoration that began as a weeklong observance in the late 1920s but was never meant to be confined by days on a calendar, and even though it was indeed a celebration it was also always meant to highlight the kinds of critical reflection and contemplation fundamental to the recovery of Black history. In that spirit, I want to briefly relay a calendar of events related to work in African American life and history — occasions taking place virtually at Rice in the weeks ahead, and also at other virtual venues featuring members of the Rice community. I think you’ll find the events below informative and thought-provoking. This kind of work, bearing on critically important issues in Black life and history, is continuously underway at the university, and February is always a particularly good time to get to know more of it.

Below are events, you can participate in as you are looking to learn and grow.

Feb. 22
3 p.m.
“Rockwell Lecture: Alumni Panel” with Stephen Finley, associate professor at Louisiana State University; Biko Gray, assistant professor at Syracuse University; and Margarita Guillory, associate professor at Boston University.

Feb. 25
Noon
“Rockwell Lecture: Confronting Structural Racism as Human Suffering” with Rhonda V. Magee, professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law.

Feb. 25
Join Rice’s Center for African and African American Studies, the Rice Department of History and the Department of Multicultural Community Relations in Rice’s Office of Public Affairs for a virtual lecture by Ya’Ke Smith, an award-winning filmmaker who also serves as an associate professor in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas. For more information contact Jan West: [email protected].

Feb. 26
1:30 p.m.
“Dangerous Creole Liaisons” with Jacqueline Couti, the Laurence H. Favrot Associate Professor of French Studies the Department of Modern and Classical Literatures and Cultures, associate director of the Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality, and affiliated faculty at the Center for African and African American Studies at Rice; Grégory Pierrot, associate professor of English at the University of Connecticut at Stamford; and Anny-Dominique Curtius, associate professor of Francophone studies at the University of Iowa.

March 4
4 p.m.
Campbell Lecture on Racial Justice: “The Stakes of Racial Justice and the Future of American Democracy” with Eddie Glaude Jr., chair of African American studies at Princeton University, eminent scholar of African American history and religion, and prominent critic and C-SPAN and MSNBC commentator on racial justice.

March 10
6 p.m.
“What if Black Women Have Always Been the Vanguard of Voting Rights?” with Martha S. Jones, Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and professor of history at Johns Hopkins University and its SNF Agora Institute.

March 10-April 21
7-8:30 p.m.
Facing Race: Racism, Resistance and Reckoning in the United States course from the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies.