1619 and Beyond: Explorations in Atlantic Slavery and its American Legacy
Friday, October 8, 2021
Lecture: “Place, Race, and Chronic Disease: ‘Inverting the Lens’ to Address the Root of Health Inequities,” Brian Smedley
Director of the American Psychological Association’s Health Disparities Office and Chief of Psychology in the Public Interest
Dr. Smedley completed his A.B. Degree at UCLA in Clinical Psychology and his Ph. D. in Psychology and Social Relations at Harvard University. His work centers around the issues of health care equity and the ways in which Psychology can help us to resolve some of the most deadly public health and social welfare issues we face today. He is a co-founder of the National Collaboration for Health Equity and has served as Vice President of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies’ Health Policy Institute.
Friday, November 5, 2021
4:30-6:00PM – Live Streamed via Zoom
Lecture: “Monumental Bodies – How Blackness Tells the American Story,” Caroline Randall Williams,
Writer-in-residence, Department of Medicine, Health, and Society, Vanderbilt University,
Video of this talk is not available.
Caroline Randall Williams is a poet, a writer of fiction, co-author of a cookbook that is far more than a cookbook, a sought-after public speaker and commentator, a social justice activist, an essayist, and more. Much of her work looks at black bodies in ways that go far beyond diagnoses. Her recent, remarkable NYT essay on black bodies as Confederate Monuments (6/26/20 reminded readers, during a particularly contentious period of local and national decision making, to think bigger, deeper thoughts. Her first book of poetry, Lucy Negro, Redux thoroughly casts William Shakespeare’s “Dark Lady” (in sonnets 127-154) in ways that take us from late-Elizabethan England to right here, right now. Williams’s work appears in highly influential scholarly journals including The Iowa Review and The Massachusetts Review as well as numerous popular publications. Professor Williams received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University (English Studies) and her MFA from the University of Mississippi.