2004 St. Clair Drake Memorial Lecture with Hortense Spillers "What is Black Culture?"

Hortense Spillers is one of the most influential and inspiring black critics of the past twenty years. Her latest publication, Black, White, and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture (2003), includes her essays from the early 1980s, in which she pioneered a broadly poststructuralist approach to African American literature, and extends through her turn to cultural studies in the 1990s. These essays include her very familiar (and frequently cited) essays, such as "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe..." and they display her passionate commitment to reading as a fundamentally political act--one pivotal to rewriting the humanist project. Professor Spillers will be introduced by Arnold Rampersad, Sara Hart Kimball Professor of English, and Chair of the AAAS Steering Committee. Please join us for our annual St. Clair Drake Memorial Lecture. Reception to follow.

The annual St. Clair Drake Memorial Lecture is dedicated to the memory of St. Clair Drake, renowned African American anthropologist and educator. He joined the Department of Anthropology at Stanford in 1969 and was the founding Director of the African & African American Studies (AAAS) program. His illustrious, scholarly career is framed by the classic books, Black Metropolis (1945), and Black Folk Here and There (2 vols. 1987-90). St. Clair Drake died in 1990.