Come join authors Janell Hobson and Kate Larson for a fun conversation about Auburn's birthday girl, featuring new perspectives, meaningful hot takes, visuals, and provocative interpretations from Ms. Magazine's #Tubman200 issue. This event is free and open to the public.
Dr. Janell Hobson is Professor in the Department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University at Albany. Hobson is the author of When God Lost Her Tongue: Historical Consciousness and the Black Feminist Imagination (Routleldge, 2021), Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture (Routledge, 2005, second edition, 2018), and Body as Evidence: Mediating Race, Globalizing Gender (SUNY Press, 2012). She has also edited the volumes Are All the Women Still White? Rethinking Race, Expanding Feminisms (SUNY Press, 2016) and The Routledge Companion to Black Women’s Cultural Histories (Routledge, 2021). She is a contributing writer to Ms. Magazine, as well as various online platforms. She also guest edited special volumes on Harriet Tubman and slavery in popular culture. She was selected as a Community Fellow for 2021-2022 at the University at Albany’s Institute for History and Public Engagement, which supports her guest editing of the Harriet Tubman Bicentennial Project with Ms. Magazine for the Spring 2022 semester.
Dr. Kate Clifford Larson is a best-selling author of acclaimed biographies, including Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero; Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter; and Walk With Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer. An award winning consultant, Larson has worked on feature film scripts—including Kasi Lemmons’s Harriet , and Robert Redford's The Conspirator—numerous documentaries, museum exhibits, public history and heritage tourism initiatives, and more. A leading authority on Tubman, her work has shaped the visitor experiences at the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn, NY, both Tubman National Parks, Maryland’s highly acclaimed Tubman State Park and its multi-state Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway and All-American Road. Her latest book, Harriet Tubman: A Reference Guide to Her Life and Works was released in June. Dr. Larson is a Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center Scholar.
This program is sponsored by the NYS Equal Rights Heritage Center. Support for this program is provided by the City of Auburn’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) allocation of funds to support the City of Auburn Historic and Cultural Sites Commission’s Harriet Tubman Bicentennial project with a goal of boosting the recovery from the pandemic for the tourism, travel, and hospitality industry.