Detroit Mercy’s African American Studies Program will honor alumni, share important news about the future and enjoy a keynote lecture over food and refreshments on Wednesday, Oct. 8. The reception will begin at 6 p.m. in the Exhibition Space in the Warren Loranger Architecture Building on the McNichols Campus.
Amy Brandt ’01 is this year’s distinguished alumna honoree. Brandt works with teams of staff members across the Midwest within the Campus Ministry of Cru, focusing on cross-cultural growth, as they strive to share the gospel with students from diverse cultural backgrounds.
The Karen and Thomas Waters Keynote Lecture, entitled Memory as Freedom Practice: The Work of Arturo Schomburg, will be delivered by Vanessa K. Valdés.
Valdés is an independent scholar whose work focuses on literature, visual arts, performances and histories of Black peoples throughout the western hemisphere. An engaging speaker, she served as a professor at the City University of New York for 17 years. The author and editor of seven books, Valdés has written on literature by Black women in the United States, Cuba and Brazil as well as the field-defining biography of Arturo Schomburg, namesake of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City. She is the editor of the Afro-Latinx Futures series at the State University of New York Press and is the co-editor of the Global Black Writers in Translation series at Vanderbilt University Press.