The CWRU Social Justice Institute’s 10th anniversary virtual event series will kick off with a keynote address from Rhonda Williams, the Social Justice Institute founder and inaugural director, Friday, Oct. 23. Virtual doors will open at 6 p.m. and the lecture will begin at 6:30 p.m. ET. Register for the keynote address.
Williams is a historian of low-income Black women’s and marginalized people’s experiences, everyday lives, politics and social struggles. Her research contributes to the rethinking of gender, political identity, citizenship, civil rights, Black liberation struggles and interactions with the U.S. state. She serves as a history professor and the John L. Seigenthaler Chair in American History at Vanderbilt University.
During her two-decade tenure as a faculty member in the history department at Case Western Reserve, she also established and directed the Postdoctoral Fellowship in African American Studies.
Williams is the author of the award-winning The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles Against Urban Inequality (2004) and Concrete Demands: The Search for Black Power in the 20th Century (2015), among other notable articles and essays.
Co-director remarks: “Our Vision for the Future”
Following the keynote address, Social Justice Institute Co-Directors Ayesha Bell Hardaway and Mark Chupp will close the evening by sharing their vision for the future of Social Justice Institute as a university-wide initiative under the Office of the Provost, and celebrating the accomplishments over the last 10 years.