Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Hollis Robbins

Harvard Book Store welcomes HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR.—the founding Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, author or co-author of twenty-one books, and Emmy Award-winning creator fifteen documentary films—and HOLLIS ROBBINS—Chair of the Humanities Department at Peabody Institute and Director of the Center for Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University—for a discussion of The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers, a landmark collection documenting the social, political, and artistic lives of African American women throughout nineteenth century. Gates and Robbins will be joined in conversation by EVELYN BROOKS HIGGINBOTHAM, the Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. In addition to the discussion, Gates, Robbins, and Higginbotham will each be reading selections out of The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers. This event is co-sponsored by the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University.

About The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers

The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers is the most comprehensive anthology of its kind: an extraordinary range of voices offering the expressions of African American women in print before, during, and after the Civil War. Edited by Hollis Robbins and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., this collection comprises work from forty-nine writers arranged into sections of memoir, poetry, and essays on feminism, education, and the legacy of African American women writers. Many of these pieces engage with social movements like abolition, women’s suffrage, temperance, and civil rights, but the thematic center is the intellect and personal ambition of African American women. The diverse selection includes well-known writers like Sojourner Truth, Hannah Crafts, and Harriet Jacobs, as well as lesser-known writers like Ella Sheppard, who offers a firsthand account of life in the world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers. Taken together, these incredible works insist that the writing of African American women writers be read, remembered, and addressed.
 
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