Media contact: Noelle Lemoine, communications assistant; tele: (413) 597-4277; email: [email protected]
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., October 19, 2016—On Thursday, Oct. 27, Sonia Sanchez will present a talk titled “Push Ups for Peace” as the 2016 W. Allison Davis 1924 and John A. Davis 1933 Lecture at Williams College. The lecture will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall. It is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a book signing.
Sanchez is a scholar, poet, playwright and activist who has been an influential force in African American literary and political culture for over three decades. She addresses issues related to the African-American experience, women, literature and culture. Sanchez was also in the forefront of the Black studies movement and taught the first course in the country on Black women. She was the first Presidential Fellow at Temple University where she began teaching in 1977 and held the Laura Carnell Chair in English until her retirement in 1999. She is one of 20 African-American women featured in “Freedom Sisters,” an interactive exhibition created by the Cincinnati Museum Center and Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition.
One of the most important writers of the Black Arts Movement, Sanchez is the author of 16 books including Homecoming, We a BaddDDD People, I’ve Been a Woman: New and Selected Poems, and Shake Loose My Skin. She has also edited two anthologies: We Be Word Sorcerers: 25 Stories by Black Americans and 360 [degrees] of Blackness Coming at You, and was the winner of the 1995 American Book Award in Poetry for Homegirls and Handgrenades. Sanchez has published numerous plays including Black Cats and Uneasy Landings and I’m Black When I’m Singing, I’m Blue When I Ain’t.
Sanchez is the recipient of the Robert Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime service to American poetry and the Langston Hughes Poetry Award. Her other honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Award, the Community Service Award from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, the Lucretia Mott Award, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Humanities, and the Peace and Freedom Award from the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She has lectured at more than 500 universities and colleges in the United States and has traveled extensively, reading her poetry in Africa, Nicaragua, Cuba, the Caribbean, Europe, China, Australia, and Canada.
The W. Allison Davis 1924 and John A. Davis 1933 Lecture commemorates the remarkable work of two distinguished scholars, brothers who, throughout their adult lives, made important contributions to equal rights and opportunity in the United States. Allison Davis, valedictorian of the Class of 1924, was a pioneer in the social anthropological study of class and caste in the American South. John A. Davis pursued wide-ranging political science work on race in both the United States and Africa. The Davis Lecture is delivered each year by a scholar whose work concentrates on some aspect of race, class, or education in the United States.
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For building locations on the Williams campus, please consult the map outside the driveway entrance to the Security Office located in Hopkins Hall on Main Street (Rte. 2), next to the Thompson Memorial Chapel, or call the Office of Communications (413) 597-4277. The map can also be found on the web at www.williams.edu/map
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Published October 19, 2016
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