Cost of Admission: Members free, $10 donation for non-members

This is an in-person lecture.

REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED FOR THIS EVENT

Harriet Tubman (ca.1822-1913) is most renowned for her work as an Underground Railroad conductor who freed more than 70 people from slavery. She later went on to free close to 750 people from slavery during the Civil War at the Combahee River, becoming the first woman in U.S. history to lead a military raid in 1863. What is lesser known is how Tubman achieved these feats through an inner and outer vision connecting her disabled body with the natural environment through her deep-seated spiritual faith. Dr. Janell Hobson will explore the complex history of Tubman's Black eco-feminist consciousness, from slavery in the South to post-emancipation freedom in upstate New York, in this public lecture.

Janell Hobson is Professor in the Department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University at Albany. She is also Director of both Undergraduate Studies and the Honors Program. She joined the core faculty shortly after receiving her PhD in Women's Studies at Emory University. Hobson has since devoted her research, teaching, and service to multiracial and transnational feminist issues in the discipline with a focus on representations and histories of women in the African Diaspora.

Hobson is the author of When God Lost Her Tongue: Historical Consciousness and the Black Feminist Imagination (Routleldge, 2021), Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture (Routledge, 2005, second edition, 2018), and Body as Evidence: Mediating Race, Globalizing Gender (SUNY Press, 2012). She has also edited the volumes Are All the Women Still White? Rethinking Race, Expanding Feminisms (SUNY Press, 2016) and The Routledge Companion to Black Women’s Cultural Histories (Routledge, 2021). She is a contributing writer to Ms. Magazine, as well as various online platforms. She also guest edited special volumes on Harriet Tubman and slavery in popular culture. She was selected as a Community Fellow for 2021-2022 at the University at Albany’s Institute for History and Public Engagement, which supports her guest editing of the Harriet Tubman Bicentennial Project with Ms. Magazine for the Spring 2022 semester.

This program is generously sponsored by the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area.