Joy A. James, Ph.D (GSAS ’87), the John B. and John T. McCoy Presidential Professor of Africana Studies and professor of political science, Williams College, will deliver the Gannon Lecture on “Democracy and Captivity: Narratives on Race and Penal Culture,” on Monday, Nov. 6, at 1 p.m. in the Flom Auditorium, Walsh Family Library, on the Rose Hill Campus. The event is free and open to the public, but attendees are asked to RSVP to: gsadean@fordham.edu or (718) 817-4615.
James received her Ph.D. in political philosophy and a degree in religious ethics at the Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University. She has published several books on race and gender politics in the United States, and was coeditor of Spirit, Space and Survival: African American Women in (White) Academe (Routledge, 1993) which won the 1994 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book on Human Rights Award.
James is also author of Resisting State Violence: Gender, Race, and Radicalism in U.S. Culture(University of Minnesota Press, 1996), and is active in campaigning for human rights for political prisoners. She serves on the editorial boards of Souls and Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies, and is the former chair of Africana Studies at Brown University.
The Gannon Lecture Series, which began in the fall of 1980, brings distinguished individuals to Fordham University to deliver public lectures on topics of their expertise. The series is named in honor of Robert I. Gannon, S.J., president of Fordham from 1936 to1949, and an outstanding and popular speaker.
