Beginning with the formation of Negro History Week (now Black History Month), this lecture by Fulbright Scholar Derrais Carter will use the music of Donny Hathaway, Aretha Franklin, and Stevie Wonder to explain the pivotal role that black music plays in creating community, critiquing society, and promoting freedom.
The talk will be accompanied by Czech perspective on the role of music in protest, which will be provided by Pavla Jonssonová of Anglo-American University.
Dr. Derrais Carter is an assistant professor of Black Studies at Portland State University. His research interests include theories of representation, contemporary black popular culture, masculinity studies, and popular music. He is co-editor of The Iconic Obama, 2007-2009: Essays on Media Representations of the Candidate and New President (2012). He is currently writing a book about race and obscenity in 1919 tentatively titled Mixed Ambitions: The Moens Scandal & Racial Uplift in the Nation’s Capital.
Pavla Jonssonová is translator, gender studies scholar, publicist, and musician. She taught at the Pedagogical Faculty of Charles University (English Department) from 1990 to 1999. In 1998, she was a Fulbright scholar at the University of California. Since 1991, she has served as a member of the board for the Center for Gender Studies in Prague. Her writing and research focuses on gender studies topics. In 2001, she published Czech translation of The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer. For twenty years, she performed original music as a member of an all-women’s rock band, ZUBY NEHTY. She is member of the feminist media group Meluzina.
