The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke (2017)

Jeffrey Stewart, Professor of Black Studies at UC Santa Barbara, was awarded the 2018 National Book Award in the nonfiction category for his beautifully written prose in The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke (Oxford University Press, 2017).  Dr. Stewart’s award marked the first time since 1984 that a book published by an academic press was bestowed with that honor.

This event will celebrate Dr. Stewart’s outstanding accomplishment and will include:

I. Welcome from the Department of Black Studies, Chancellor Yang, Dean Charlie Hale, and others.

II. Reflections from Oxford University Press
Niko Pfund – President and Academic Publisher, Oxford University Press

III. Engaging The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke 
Reflections and an intimate conversation between Jeffrey Stewart, Cheryl Wall, and Terrance Wooten.

Cheryl Wall – Board of Governors Zora Neale Hurston Distinguished Professor of English, Rutgers University
Professor Wall is the author of Worrying the Line: Black Women Writers, Lineage, and Literary Tradition (2005) and Women of the Harlem Renaissance (1995), and the editor of Changing Our Own Words: Criticism, Theory, and Writing by Black Women (1989). She has edited two volumes of writing by Zora Neale Hurston for the Library of America – Novels and Short Stories (1995) and Folklore, Memoirs and Other Writings (1995) – as well as two volumes of criticism on Hurston’s fiction: “Sweat”: Texts and Contexts (1997) and Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Casebook (2000). She is the section editor for “Literature since 1975” in the Norton Anthology of African American Literature (2003). Professor Wall, a specialist in Black women’s writing, the Harlem Renaissance, and Zora Neale Hurston, serves on the editorial board of American Literature and on the advisory boards of African American Review and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. A former chair of the department, Professor Wall remains active in university affairs. In 2003, she was co-principal with Mary Hartman of the Institute for Women’s Leadership on “Reaffirming Action: Designs for Diversity in Higher Education.” This Ford Foundation-funded initiative examined the strategies higher education institutions successfully employ to enhance racial and gender equity. In fact, one of the program’s site visits was at UC Santa Barbara. Most recently, Professor Wall was selected by Rutgers University President Richard L. McCormick to serve as Vice Chair of the Steering Committee on Implementation, a body organized to enact sweeping changes in undergraduate education. She has just become co-chair, with President McCormick, of the President’s Council on Institutional Diversity and Equity. She is also the recipient of the Warren I. Susman Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Terrance Wooten – Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Black Studies, UC Santa Barbara
Dr. Wooten received his Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. On July 1, 2019, he will join the Department of Black Studies at UCSB as Assistant Professor. Dr. Wooten’s research interests include Critical and Gender Studies; Black Feminist Theory; Black Masculinities Studies; Socio-Legal Studies; Queer Theory; Critical Homeless Studies; Carceral Studies; Urban Studies; and Trauma-informed Ethnography.

IV. Reception, Book Signing, and Jazz Quartet