After a record 19 consecutive years at Florida International University (FIU), the Lecture has a new home at the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas, Austin. Last year, the Series was launched via four pre-recorded video conversations with its Founder, as well as prior speakers, in addition to an online exhibition of the Eric Williams Memorial Collection Museum at the University of the West Indies (UWI, Trinidad and Tobago). Both are provided on the website previously listed.
This year, the Lecture hosts award-winning author, historian and educator, Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University. Andersons reputation as a fiery and passionate speaker complements her writing in her book of a similar name. According to the New York Times,
it seems to have been written from a state of emergency, in an adrenaline-fueled sprint. Anderson is a stinging polemicist; her book rolls through a condensed history of voting rights and disenfranchisement
[and] will push you to think not just about the vote count but about who counts, too.”
A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Miami University, Anderson earned bachelors and masters degrees in Political Science (International Relations) and a bachelors in history. She received her Ph.D. in history from Ohio State University.
Professor Andersons role as a public scholar has included participation in working groups dealing with race, equality, minority rights, and criminal justice at Stanford Universitys Center for Applied Science and Behavioral Studies, the Aspen Institute, the United Nations, and as a member of the US State Departments Historical Advisory Committee. In 2018, she was named a Guggenheim Fellow for Constitutional Studies. She is currently on the Advisory Board of the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative.
She has appeared on MSNBC, PBS, and Democracy Now!, and has offered commentary in the Huffington Post, UK Guardian, and the New York Times. Her op-ed in the Washington Post on the Ferguson, Missouri, race riots was the most shared for the newspaper in 2014.
Established in 1999 at FIU, the Eric Williams Memorial Lecture honors the distinguished Caribbean statesman, internationally-renowned historian, and author of several books. His 1944 groundbreaking study Capitalism and Slavery, popularly referred to as The Williams Thesis, arguably re-framed the historiography of the British trans-Atlantic slave trade and established the contribution of Caribbean slavery to the development of both Britain and America. The book has been translated into nine languages, including Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish and Korean. A tenth, Dutch, is forthcoming. It continues to inform today’s ongoing debate and, in March 2022, was recorded as #5 on the UK Sunday Times Bestseller list. Eric E. Williams was also the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago and Head of Government for a quarter of a century until his death in 1981. He led the country to Independence from Britain in 1962 and onto Republicanism in 1976.
Among prior Eric Williams Memorial Lecture speakers have been: the late John Hope Franklin, one of Americas premier historians of the African-American experience; Kenneth Kaunda, former President of the Republic of Zambia; Cynthia Pratt, former Deputy Prime Minister of the Bahamas; Mia Mottley, now Prime Minister of Barbados; Beverly Anderson-Manley, former First Lady of Jamaica; Portia Simpson Miller, former Prime Minister of Jamaica; Hon. Kenny Anthony, former Prime Minister of Saint Lucia; Hon. Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and The Grenadines; the celebrated civil rights activist Angela Davis and prize-winning Haitian author Edwige Danticat.
The Lecture, which seeks to provide an intellectual forum for the examination of pertinent issues in Caribbean and African Diaspora history and politics, is co-sponsored in part by UTs Center for the Study of Race and Democracy; Glenn Joseph; Dr. & Mrs. Leroy Lashley; Jerry Nagee.
The Lecture is also supported by The Eric Williams Memorial Collection Research Library, Archives & Museum at UWI, which was inaugurated by former US Secretary of State, Colin L. Powell in 1998. It was named to UNESCOs prestigious Memory of the World Register in 1999.
Books by Eric Williams and Carol Anderson will be available for purchase at the Lecture.
Media Contact: Erica Williams Connell Phone: 305-905-9999
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