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October 7, 2016

Lyman Hall, Room 212

Lorraine Hansberry Artist/Activist: Writing Freedom

Born in Chicago in 1930, Lorraine Hansberry made history when her play A Raisin in the
Sun premiered on Broadway in 1959. Hansberry remains best-known for A Raisin in the
Sun, but the play both exemplifies and overshadows her other accomplishments as a
black lesbian artist-activist. This talk considered how Hansberry’s early writing
contributed to what she called “the movement” through acts of imagination.

Soyica Colbert is the Chair of the Department of Performing Arts and an Associate Professor of
African American Studies and Theater and Performance Studies at Georgetown University. She is the author of The African American Theatrical Body (2011) and Black Movements (forthcoming 2017). Colbert edited the Black Performance special issue of African American Review (2012) and co-edited The Psychic Hold of Slavery (Rutgers University Press, 2016). Founder of the New England Black Scholars Collective and Co-Founder of RCDC, a mentoring, educational, and coaching services company, Colbert is the recipient of the Schomburg Scholars-in-Residence Fellowship, Woodrow Wilson Foundation Career Enhancement Fellowship, Stanford Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship, Mellon Summer Research Grant, and the Robert W. Woodruff Library Fellowship.

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