BIOGRAPHY OF SHIRLEY CHISHOLM | A Busboys and Poets Books Presentation
Date and Time
Jan 18, 2023 6:00 pm
Location
14th & V
2021 14th St NW, Washington, District of Columbia, 20009
Jan 18, 2023 6:00 pm
14th & V
BIOGRAPHY OF SHIRLEY CHISHOLM | A Busboys and Poets Books Presentation
Join us to learn about the life of black feminist Shirley Chisholm.
Author Anastasia Curwood shakes up New York and national politics by becoming the first African American congresswoman and, later, the first Black major-party presidential candidate, Shirley Chisholm left an indelible mark as an "unbought and unbossed" firebrand and a leader in politics for meaningful change. Chisholm spent her formative years moving between Barbados and Brooklyn, and the development of her political orientation did not follow the standard narratives of the civil rights or feminist establishments. Rather, Chisholm arrived at her Black feminism on her own path, making signature contributions to U.S. politics as an inventor and practitioner of Black feminist power—the vantage point centering Black girls and women in the movement that sought to transform political power into a broadly democratic force.
Anastasia C. Curwood interweaves Chisholm's public image, political commitments, and private experiences to create a definitive account of a consequential life. In so doing, Curwood suggests new truths for understanding the social movements of Chisholm's time and the opportunities she forged for herself through multicultural, multigenerational, and cross-gender coalition building.
Anastasia is joining the Busboys stage for a celebration and book discussion. They will be joined in conversation by Nadia E. Brown. This event is free and open to all. Our program begins at 6:00 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of BIOGRAPHY OF SHIRLEY CHISHOLM will be available for purchase before and during the event. Please note that this event will not be livestreamed.
We ask that guests RSVP in order to receive direct updates about the event from Busboys and Poets Books.
Anastasia Curwood is Professor of History and Director of the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies at the University of Kentucky. Using an interdisciplinary lens across history, African-American Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies, she writes about twentieth-century African-American women, gender, and sexuality, and African-American intellectuals, politics and culture.
Her first book, Stormy Weather: Middle-Class African American Marriages Between the Two World Wars (UNC Press, 2010) centered on the cultural and social contests over African-Americans' marriages in the early twentieth century. Curwood is the recipient of several grants and honors, including a Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, a Ford Postdoctoral Fellowship, and a Research Fellowship at the James Weldon Johnson Institute at Emory University.
Nadia E. Brown (Ph.D., Rutgers University) is a Professor of Government, chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and affiliate in the African American Studies program at Georgetown University. She specializes in Black women’s politics and holds a graduate certificate in Women's and Gender Studies. Dr. Brown's research interests lie broadly in identity politics, legislative studies, and Black women's studies. While trained as a political scientist, her scholarship on intersectionality seeks to push beyond disciplinary constraints to think more holistically about the politics of identity.
She is the author or editor of several award winning books – including Sisters in the Statehouse: Black Women and Legislative Decision Making (Oxford University Press); Sister Style: The Politics of Appearance for Black Women Political Elites (with Danielle Lemi); Distinct Identities: Minority Women in U.S. Politics (with Sarah Allen Gershon, Routledge Press); The Politics of Protest: Readings on the Black Lives Matter Movement (with Ray Block, Jr. and Christopher Stout, Routledge Press); Approaching Democracy: American Government in Times of Challenge (with Larry Berman, Bruce Allen Murphy and Sarah Allen Gershon, Routledge Press). Professor Brown is the lead editor of Politics, Groups and Identities. Professor Brown is part of the #MeTooPoliSci Collective where she spearheads efforts to stop sexual harassment in the discipline. Along with co-PIs Rebecca Gill (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) Stella Rouse (University of Maryland, College Park), Elizabeth Sharrow (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) she is the recipient of a million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation for their project titled "#MeTooPoliSci Leveraging A Professional Association to Address Sexual Harassment in Political Science." Lastly, Professor Brown is an editor with The Monkey Cage, a political science blog in the Washington Post.
