For the past decade, Professor Claudrena Harold has combined historical research with creative practice to highlight the beauty, richness, and complexity of the Black experience at the University of Virginia. In this lecture, Claudrena will share the results of and response to her efforts to highlight the rich tradition of political protest at the University, celebrate the students who built vibrant social and cultural institutions, and confront the hard truths of the past and the present.

She will also show brief clips from her film series, Black Fire. Made as part of an ongoing collaboration between Claudrena and experimental filmmaker and UVA professor Kevin Jerome Everson, the Black Fire film series, which consists of eleven shorts, explore the ways Black students transformed the university—politically, socially, culturally, and intellectually—from the 1960s through the present. Creatively employing reenactment, interviews, music, and performance, Kevin and Claudrena pay tribute to the unsung trailblazers who paved the way for greater equality at UVA while bringing the university’s history of racial and social struggle into dialogue with the present.

About the Speaker:

Claudrena N. Harold is the Edward Stettinius Professor of History at the University of Virginia. She is the author of three books, The Rise and Fall of the Garvey Movement in the Urban South, 1918-1942, New Negro Politics in the Jim Crow South, and When Sunday Comes: Gospel Music in the Soul and Hip-Hop Eras. She has coedited two volumes, The Punitive Turn: New Approaches to Race and Incarceration and Charlottesville 2017: The Legacy of Race and Inequity.

As a part of her ongoing work on the history of African American life at UVA, she has written, produced, and co-directed with Kevin Everson eleven short films. These films have screened at the National Gallery of Art, the Whitney Museum, Berlin International Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the London Film Festival, the Black Star Film Festival, New York Film Festival, TIFF Lightbox, and other venues across the world.

Admission is inclusive of networking receptions featuring beer, wine, and light snacks before and after the panel. Virginia Club members may reserve a maximum of two tickets at the member rate (complimentary). Not a member yet? Join today!