The sixth annual Erskine A. Peters Fellowship Symposium, titled “Reconstructing Michael Jackson’s Image: Explorations of Body, Spirit and Society,” will be held Thursday, March 25, 2010, at 7 p.m. in the Eck Visitors Center auditorium at the University of Notre Dame. Sponsored by the Department of Africana Studies, the symposium will feature the 2009-10 Erskine Peters Fellows, who will discuss the image of the late musical artist Michael Jackson from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.
The symposium will be preceded by a reception at 6 p.m. in the Eck Center. Both events are free and open to the public.
The symposium will be moderated by Shana Redmond, assistant professor of American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California. The five 2009-10 Erskine Peters Fellows are: Jean Beaman, Department of Sociology, Northwestern University; Jessica Graham, Department of History, University of Chicago; Nicole Ivy, Department of African and American Studies, Yale University; Laurence Ralph, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago; and Marques Redd, Department of English, University of California at Berkeley.
The Erskine A. Peters Dissertation Year Fellowship at Notre Dame was established in 1999 to enable outstanding African-American doctoral candidates in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and theological disciplines to experience life at Notre Dame while devoting their full energies to the completion of their dissertations.
The Peters Fellowship honors the life and academic achievements of one of the University’s most distinguished and beloved professors, Erskine A. Peters. Peters taught English at the University and became legendary for his commitment to scholarship, community service, and graduate education in the College of Arts and Letters.
Peters, who was 49 years old when he died in 1998, joined the Notre Dame faculty in 1987, having previously taught for 11 years at the University of California at Berkeley, where he had served multiple terms as chairperson of Afro-American studies and dean of the College of Letters and Science. A specialist in American and Afro-American literature, he was a well-regarded teacher and author, and a compassionate advocate for African American academics.
Contact: Maria McKenna, Program Coordinator, Erskine A. Peters Fellowship, 574-631-0452, Maria.K.McKenna.52@nd.edu
Originally published by newsinfo.nd.edu.
