Wesleyan University To Celebrate 100th Anniversary of W.E.B. Du Bois's Souls of Black Folk

For immediate release: Wednesday, September 29, 2004

(MIDDLETOWN, CT) – Wesleyan University will bring together some of the country's most respected sociologists and race leaders to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the publication of W.E.B Du Bois's most important literary work, Souls of Black Folk, on Tuesday, October 12 in the Memorial Chapel. The book is considered a masterpiece of literary non-fiction and a source of still powerful ideas that influenced the thinking of social theorists.

The Du Bois lectures involve four separate talks. Alford A. Young Jr., professor of Sociology, Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Michigan will deliver the first lecture, at 10:30 a.m. His talk is "W.E.B. Du Bois and the Souls of Urban Ethnography." Young has completed research on race, urban poverty and young black men in Chicago's most distant ghettos. At 2:40 p.m., Elizabeth Higginbotham, professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware, will deliver her talk called "Searching for the Souls of Black Women: W.E.B. Du Bois's Contribution." Higginbotham is a major figure in the Memphis research group on Black Women in America as well as a feminist scholar. At 4:15 p.m., Jerry G. Watts, professor of American Studies at Trinity College and professor of English at the CUNY graduate center, will deliver his lecture called "Du Bois, Souls, and the Crisis of Black Intellectuals." Watts has been described by E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post as one of the best interpreters of the civil rights years in America.

The day will conclude with a final lecture at 8 p.m. by Young, Higginbotham, Watts and Wesleyan University Andrus Professor of Sociology Charles Lemert called "The Souls of Black Folk and Social Thought: 1903-2003 and After."

This lecture series is sponsored by the Edward W. Snowdon Fund, the Matthew Lemert Endowment, Dean of Social Sciences, the Public Affairs Center, African American Studies Program, Women's Studies Program and the Department of Sociology.

For more information, please contact Charles Lemert, Wesleyan University Professor of Sociology at (860) 685-2948 or clemert@wesleyan.edu.