Dr. Noliwe Rooks, associate director of the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University, will join Hamilton students in a panel discussion on hair and self-expression on Thursday, Feb. 23, at 7 p.m., in the Red Pit, KJ. The panel, which will be moderated by Professor of Classics and Africana Studies Shelley Haley, is co-sponsored by the Black and Latino Student Union and Days-Massolo Center. It is free and open to the public.
Panelists will explore how we, as a society, “do” hair. What does your hair say about you? How does it represent your race, your gender? How do we alter, contain, or express ourselves through our hair?
Rooks’ first book, Hair Raising: Beauty, Culture, and African American Women, explores the history and politics and hair and beauty culture in African American communities in the 19th and 20th centuries. Her current intellectual interests involve encouraging problem-solving through social entrepreneurship, addressing social justice issues through academic and community collaborative projects, and raising awareness of the centrality of race to and for a liberal arts education in America.
She is the author of two other books: Ladies' Pages: African American Women's Magazines and the Culture That Made Them, and White Money/Black Power: The History of African American Studies and the Crisis of Race in Higher Education.
