Author, advocate and independent scholar Barbara Smith will present a lecture titled “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building” on Tuesday, April 7, at 7 p.m., in the Red Pit in the Kirner-Johnson Building. Smith’s lecture is sponsored by the Women’s Studies Department and is free and open to the public.
Smith has played a groundbreaking role in opening up a national cultural and political dialogue about the intersections of race, class, sexuality, and gender. She was among the first to define an African American women’s literary tradition and to build black women’s studies and black feminism in the United States. Smith has been politically active in many social justice movements since the 1960s.
As an organizer, writer, publisher, independent scholar, professor and elected official, Barbara Smith’s work has shaped scholarship, teaching, and progressive activism that challenges classism, sexism, and homophobia. She is currently a public service professor in the School of Social Welfare at the State University at Albany and a former member of Albany’s Common Council.
