Join us for presentations and a panel discussion on this year's Black History Month theme: the Black family and its representations, identity, and diversity.  Together, Drs. Michael Dickinson, Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, and Grace Gipson will explore aspects of the Black family unit and its representation, both historically and in more contemporary media.  A Q&A session will follow the discussion.

Dr. Michael Dickinson (PhD, University of Delaware) is an Assistant Professor of History at Virginia Commonwealth University.  He previously served as the 2019-2020 Barra Sabbatical Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's McNeil Center for Early American Studies.  His research examines early American enslaved communities, and his book Almost Dead: Slavery and Social Rebirth in the Black Urban Atlantic, 1680-1807 will be published in 2021.

Dr. Kimberly Wallace-Sanders (PhD, Boston University) is an Associate Professor of American and African American Studies at Emory University.  She specializes in African American women's literature, stereotypes and gender in visual culture, and representations of race and the female body.  Her works include Skin Deep, Spirit Strong: The Female Black Body in American Culture and Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory.

Dr. Grace Gipson (PhD, University of California, Berkeley) is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.  Dr. Gipson's work focuses on Black popular culture, Afrofuturism, and representations of race and gender in comic books.  Her current book project will explore Black female identity in comics and fandom culture.

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