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Tuskegee University to host virtual 24th Annual Ellison Lecture

March 16, 2021

Adam Bradley standing in from of painting

   
Contact:  Kawana McGough, Office of Communications, Public Relations and Marketing

 

Dr. Adam Bradley, professor of English at UCLA and director of the Laboratory for Race & Popular Culture (RAP Lab), will deliver Tuskegee University’s 24th Annual Ellison Lecture virtually on Tuesday, March 30, 2021, at 3:00 p.m. CST. His title, “Ralph Ellison Now," reflects on what Ralph Ellison—the man and his work—mean for our moment and why we need to heed him now more than ever. 

This year’s speaker joins an illustrious cadre of Ellison Lecturers including Natasha Trethewey, Kevin Young, Haki Madhubuti, Houston R. Baker, Trudier Harris, and Arnold Rampersad. The annual lecture, hosted by Tuskegee's Department of Modern Languages, Communication, and Philosophy, was established to honor Ralph W. Ellison, who attended Tuskegee and based part of his most famous work, Invisible Man, on his college experiences.

Dr. Bradley earned his Ph.D. in English from Harvard University and has Authored or edited numerous books, including: Book of Rhymes, The Poetry of Pop, The Anthology of Rap, and the New York Times bestseller One Day It’ll All Make Sense, a memoir he wrote for the rapper and actor Common.  He began studying the literature of Ralph Ellison as a nineteen-year-old research assistant to Ellison’s literary executor, John F. Callahan.

In the years that followed, Bradley and Callahan co-edited the posthumous edition of Ellison’s second novel, Three Days Before the Shooting...  Bradley also wrote a study of Ellison’s life and fiction, Ralph Ellison in Progress. He is now completing the annotated edition of Invisible Man for Random House. Bradley’s writing and commentary appears regularly in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and elsewhere.

This year’s Ellison Lecture is one of the culminating events of a grant funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Literary Legacies of Macon County and Tuskegee Institute: Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph W. Ellison, and Albert Murray.

Prior to the lecture on March 30th, Dr. Adaku Ankumah, Principal Investigator, and Drs. Rhonda Collier and Zanice Bond, Co-Directors, invite members of our campus and community to join us in a community reading of Ellison’s short story “Flying Home” on March 29th at 4:00 p.m.  Students, faculty, staff and the community are invited to these free Zoom events.  For more information, contact Dr. Ankumah at aankumah@tuskegee.edu.

Ellison Lecture: 
https://tuskegee.zoom.us/j/95499084517?pwd=VUt3cEozS1ZISXlibncvcnM5OG9Udz09

Community Reading:
https://tuskegee.zoom.us/j/99215246377?pwd=Vm5zZnEveHZZWEx4MnZqcXVPQVJ6QT09

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