On Thursday, March 30, Shanna G. Benjamin will give a public talk on her biography of Nellie Y. McKay. The event will take place at 5 p.m. in room 314 of Kimpel Hall.

Benjamin is a professor of African American Studies at Wake Forest University.

African American literature, as a discipline, was never a promise. It was a hope fulfilled by scholars who fought to create disciplinary space for the furious flowering of a literature wrought by persons of African descent.

In her public talk, "Before Black Literature: Nellie Y. McKay, Collective Vision, and the Power of One to Overcome," Benjamin will read from her biography Half in Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Nellie Y. McKay and discuss how Black literature went from being an English Department sidenote to being a seminal part of literary studies.

Specifically, Benjamin will draw from McKay's life and work to outline the transformative possibilities that emerge when a collective vision combines with individual effort to advance inclusive and expansive ways of knowing.

Benjamin's talk is being sponsored by the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences as well as by the Department of English, the Department of History and the Department of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures.