The focus of the next Arts & Humanities Brown Bag Lecture, “Rethinking Boundaries & Borders: The Underground Railroad in the Classroom,” will be on the crucial role Fredonia's town and region played in helping thousands of slaves reach freedom.
The lecture will be held on Wednesday, April 6, from noon to 1 p.m. in S-104 of the Williams Center. It will be immediately followed by a Brown Bag Dessert and informal conversation with some of the featured speakers. The event is free and open to the public.
The lecture, to be introduced by local historian Wendy Straight, will feature Dr. Jennifer Hildebrand of the history department and Dr. Saundra Liggins of the English department, who together developed a new course titled, “Niagara’s Underground Railroad.” The course includes a segment offered in Spring 2011 and a May-term travel experience, where students will visit Underground Railroad sites in Western New York and southeastern Canada.
Dr. Hildebrand is an assistant professor who specializes in African American history and culture in the 19th century United States; particularly in the role that African American culture played in the creation of the "American" identity. Dr. Liggins is an associate professor whose interests and research are in African American Literature. This course emerged from their receipt of a Faculty Enrichment Program grant from the Government of Canada under its 2009-10 Canadian Studies Grant Program.
“We hope to introduce students to the history and literature of a people that most of them have not studied,” says Liggins. “Another one of our goals in maintaining this local focus is to demonstrate to our students that history is made by people just like them, literature is written by people just like them, and that the actions of individuals can affect the unfolding of international history.”
To learn more about this event, contact series co-director Natalie Gerber at gerber@fredonia.edu or 716-673-3125, or visit www.fredonia.edu/brownbag.
Since 2004, The Arts and Sciences Brown Bag Lecture Series, sponsored by the Fredonia College Foundation’s Carnahan-Jackson Humanities Fund and the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, has offered free monthly talks showcasing scholarly and creative work by SUNY Fredonia faculty, staff, students, and community partners. These talks provide an opportunity for intellectual conversations across disciplinary boundaries and seek to create a broad and vigorous community of learners on our campus.
