Bennett College for Women News October 21, 2011 Noted Author, Scholar and Activist is Bennett College's "Lift Every Voice" Speaker Duchess Miriam Harris, Ph.D; J.D., Associate Professor of American Studies at Macalester College, author of "Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Obama", and co-editor with Bruce D. Baum of "Racially Writing the Republic: Racists, Race Rebels, and Transformations of American Identity", will be the speaker in Bennett College's, "Lift Every Voice" Speaker Series on Thursday, October 27, 2011 at 11:00 am in the Annie Merner Pfeiffer Chapel. The speaker series, an initiative started by President Julianne Malveaux, brings to the Bennett campus and the Greensboro community, voices that lift and inspire. The event is free and open to the public. There will be a book signing with Harris on Thursday evening at 6:00 pm in the Holgate Library. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, Harris enrolled at the University of Minnesota, where she earned her PhD in American Studies, writing her dissertation on black women's organizing in response to Black Power and the Second Wave of Feminism. At the completion of her PhD, she was one of two graduates in a class of sixteen to be nominated for the American Studies Association National Dissertation Prize. Harris graduated in May 1997, and in December was named one of Thirty Young Leaders of the Future under the age of thirty by Ebony Magazine. She spent the next years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota Law School. In 2007, Harris decided that attending law school would allow her to expand her teaching possibilities further and was admitted to William Mitchell College as a "William Mitchell Fellow" (1 of 21 in an entering class of 336). Harris joined the faculty at Macalester College in 1998. During the Spring 2003 semester at Macalester, she and several colleagues developed a proposal to create a new "Department of American Studies," which would house the formerly independent but closely connected African American Studies and Comparative North American Studies programs. After finalizing the new program, Harris served as the department's first chairperson for the next two years. The "Lift Every Voice" Speaker Series has brought to the Bennett campus and the Greensboro community such notable figures as Roslyn Brock, Chairman of the National Board of Directors for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Victoria Rowell, actress advocate, mother, former foster child, and New York Times Bestselling author; Iyanla Vanzant, the premier African American teacher, writer and speaker; Asha Bandele, an award-winning author and journalist; the honorable Linda Tarr-Whelan, Demos Distinguished Senior Fellow and premier expert on women's leadership; award-winning journalist, Ed Gordon; the phenomenal poet, Nikki Giovanni; and William C. Bell, President and Chief Executive Officer of Casey Family Programs. Other speakers have included Rev. Marcia Dyson, hailed as on of our nation's foremost religious figures and spiritual writers; Dr. Sheila Simmons, Associate Director of Human and Civil Rights Department, National Education Association; George Fraser, author of the critically acclaimed book, Click; Donna Oldham, Senior Communications Manager, Dell, Inc.; and Yvonne Johnson, former Mayor of Greensboro. SANDRA M. PHOENIX Program Director HBCU Library Alliance sphoenix@hbculibraries.org www.hbculibraries.org 404.592.4820 Skype:sandra.phoenix1 1438 West Peachtree Street NW Suite 200 Atlanta, GA 30309 Toll Free: 1.800.999.8558 (Lyrasis) Fax: 404.892.7879 www.lyrasis.org Honor the ancestors, honor the children.