Dr. Carmen Phelps, UT associate professor of English, will have “A Conversation on Twelve Years a Slave: Reading Black Women in Fiction and Film” Wednesday, Feb. 26.
The free, public program will be held in the Libbey Hall Dining Room. A wine and cheese reception will start at 5:30 p.m., and the discussion will begin at 6 p.m.
“12 Years a Slave,” which is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, is based on the 1853 memoir of Solomon Northup, who was born free in New York. In 1841, the carpenter and violinist was kidnapped in Washington, D.C., and sold into slavery. He was enslaved in Louisiana until he was rescued from a cotton plantation in 1853.
Northup’s story was published one year after Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Charlene Gilbert, professor and chair of women’s and gender studies, will moderate the discussion.
For more information, call the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at 419.530.2233.
