The annual Najee E. Muhammad Memorial Lecture features Dr. Mary E. Weems presenting “Black Notes: One Woman Performance” on Wednesday, April 15, at 7 p.m. in Galbreath Chapel.
A book signing follows the lecture.
Weems is a poet, playwright, imagination-intellect theorist and social-cultural foundations of education scholar. She is the author and/or editor of 13 books.
The lecture is sponsored by Critical Studies in Education, the Educational Studies Department, the African American Studies Department, and the Multicultural Center at Ohio University. For more information, contact Jaylynne Hutchinson at hutchinj@ohio.edu. Dr. Najee E. Muhammad who was an original member of the Critical Cultural Studies in Education program, and who passed away last year. The annual Najee E. Muhammad Memorial Lecture as well as the Najee E. Muhammad Memorial Award were founded in his honor.
Abstract: Original Negro spirituals were composed of only the black keys on a piano. Some say it was to echo the sounds coming from the bowels of slave ships. Like the Sankofa bird, which in the Akan language of Ghana means “to reach back and get it,” Black Notes begins by returning to the past, then moving forward through contemporary movements both lived and imagined. In this performance piece, Weems uses auto/ethnography and poetic and narrative inquiry as her methods to investigate the black experience through a cultural lens that shifts from the personal to the political.
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