Dr. Tru Leverette Hall, chair of English and director of Africana Studies, University of North Florida

The Black Studies program is pleased to present its Spring Lecture with Dr. Tru Leverette Hall. Her presentation is titled: River & Rock: African Americans at Home in the World. She will speak on the significance of place by highlighting creative placemaking in African American communities and the nuanced relationship between African Americans and the natural world, emphasizing connection with their historical and contemporary ties to nature. She will also speak about her project Water Stories, a collaborative, community-engaged, multi-year interdisciplinary digital humanities project combining oral history, the arts, land memory and communal healing. The project aims to study and restore environmental assets in community and to preserve African American performing arts, storytelling and histories. 

Her current book project, River & Rock: African Americans at Home in the World, uses literary analysis, oral history and autoethnography to explore the historical and contemporary realities of African Americans’ connections to nature and their multi-layered relationship with the natural world. 

The Spring Lecture will take place Feb. 11 from 2 until 3:15 p.m. in the Peabody Auditorium.

Cosponsors: 

Black Studies, The Rural Studies Institute, Ina Dillard Russell Library, The Digital Humanities Collaborative, The Cultural Center, The Department of Philosophy, Religion and Liberal Studies, Women's and Gender Studies

Bio: https://webapps.unf.edu/faculty/bio/N00104355

Project website: https://waterstories.unfdhi.org/