Koritha Mitchell, Ph.D., award-winning author, feminist scholar, and cultural critic, presents "What if Americans Had Listened to Black Women of the 1800s?"
A 1996 Ohio Wesleyan graduate and professor of English at The Ohio State University, Mitchell will speak in the Benes Rooms of OWU's Hamilton-Williams Campus Center, 40 Rowland Ave., Delaware.
Her presentation will feature insights from editing the work of Harriet Jacobs while witnessing the Supreme Court's commitment to ending abortion access and limiting the right to vote. Jacobs's "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" is the first book-length autobiography by a formerly enslaved African American woman. It sheds light on 19th-century Black women and, in the process, Mitchell explains, exposes American culture's fundamental beliefs as the nation built its foundation on treating Black women not as people but as chattels, moveable pieces of property. Even while enslaved, Mitchell says, Jacobs exemplified the critical thinking of engaged citizenship.
Mitchell also is the author of "Living with Lynching" and "From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture." Her public commentary has appeared in outlets including Time, The Washington Post, CNN, Good Morning America, The Huffington Post, NBC News, PBS Newshour, and NPR's Morning Edition. Learn more at www.korithamitchell.com.
Her presentation is OWU's 2023-2024 Katherine Kearney Carpenter Lecture sponsored by the Ohio Wesleyan Department of English. Admission is free. Learn more at owu.edu/English.