2025 JWJI Distinguished Lecture

On Thursday, April 24, 2025, Deborah E. McDowell, the Alice Griffin Professor of Literary Studies at the University of Virginia, will deliver the 2025 Distinguished Lecture. Her talk, titled “I’ll Make Me a World: James Weldon Johnson and the Long Emancipation,” will explore Johnson’s enduring impact on literature and the ongoing struggle for racial justice.

 

Deborah E. McDowell is a scholar of African American and American literature. She is the Alice Griffin Professor of Literary Studies and former Director of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia. Her extensive body of work includes ‘The Changing Same’: Studies in Fiction by African-American Women, Leaving Pipe Shop: Memories of Kin, and The Punitive Turn: Race, Inequality, and Mass Incarceration, co-edited with Juan Battle and Claudrena Harold. In addition to her numerous articles, book chapters, and scholarly editions, her research continues to shape critical conversations on race, identity, and historical memory.

 

The lecture will take place at 4:00 PM in the Atwood Chemistry Building, Room 360, at Emory University, located at 1515 Dickey Dr, Atlanta, GA 30322. Attendees are encouraged to park at the Peavine Visitor Parking Lot at 27 Eagle Row, Atlanta, GA 30322.

 

To register for the event, please click here. For any inquiries, contact Antonio Kyler at akyler@emory.edu