International Women's Day Speaker Ruth Nicole Brown

Lecture by Ruth Nicole Brown, associate professor of gender and women's studies, and education policy, organization, and leadership, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Brown’s&nbsp;research documents, analyzes, and interrogates black girls’ lived experience as it intersects with socio-political constructions of black girlhood. She is the visionary of SOLHOT (Saving Our Lives, Hear Our Truths), a “space” dedicated to collectively dreaming black girlhood to creatively engage black girl genius through the desires, experiences, and memories of black girls and those who love us. She has authored two books, <em>Black Girlhood Celebration: Toward A Hip Hop Feminist Pedagogy </em>(Peter Lang Press, 2009) and <em>Hear Our Truths: The Creative Potential of Black Girlhood </em>(Illinois Press, 2013).&nbsp; She has also coedited two anthologies, <em>The Hip Hop Feminist Pedagogy Reader with Chamara Jewel Kwayke </em>(Peter Lang Press, 2012) and <em>Disrupting Qualitative Inquiry: Possibilities and Tensions in Educational Research</em> (Peter Lang, 2014) with Rozana Carducci and Candace Kuby.

Reception to follow. Sponsored by the Baylies Willey Fund&nbsp;and gender and women’s studies program.