Rutgers University English professor Erica Edwards will deliver the seventh annual Peggy Pascoe Memorial Lecture, “Counterplanning from the Kitchen Table: June Jordan and the Domestic Literary Enterprise, 1979-1985,” at the University of Oregon Feb. 7.

Edwards’ presentation will focus on Jordan’s work as a poet and activist and centers her as an influential figure for gender, queer and ethnic studies. Edwards will speak at noon in the Crater Lake South room of the Erb Memorial Union.

Edwards' talk is a collaborative effort by the Department of Ethnic Studies and assistant professor Shoniqua Roach with the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

It is part of the four-part speaker series New Directions in Black Feminist Studies, organized by Roach and the Department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies. The series began with University of California, Santa Barbara’s Mireille Miller-Young in October 2018; Edwards will be the third speaker in series.

Edwards specializes in African-American literature and culture is the author of “Charisma and the Fictions of Black Leadership.” Lynn Fujiwara, associate professor of ethnic studies, said Edwards’ work “boldly challenges top-down accounts of historical change that obscure the people and methods that have created social and political shifts.”

“Erica Edwards was chosen for the 2019 Peggy Pascoe Memorial Lecture because of her groundbreaking scholarship in black literary studies foregrounding race, gender and queer studies,” Fujiwara said. “Dr. Edwards' talk beautifully connects to the mission of the Peggy Pascoe Memorial Lecture.”

The Peggy Pascoe Memorial Lecture was started in 2011 to honor the significant contributions that Pascoe, a historian, professor and UO faculty member, made to the ethnic studies community.

“We developed the annual Peggy Pascoe Memorial Lecture to honor Professor Pascoe's legacy of mentorship and dedication to the building of ethnic studies at the UO,” Fujiwara said. “An influential scholar of her generation, she authored ground-breaking histories of the American West that centered the intersections of race, gender and sexuality.”

More information about Pascoe and the black feminist speaker series is available online.