ITHACA, N.Y. -- Valerie Smith, director of African American Studies at Princeton University, will deliver a free public talk, "Memory and Civil Rights," Thursday, Oct. 9, at 4:30 p.m. in Room 258 of Goldwin Smith Hall on the Cornell University campus.

Smith, the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature at Princeton, specializes in feminism, film studies and African-American and American expressive culture and visual culture. She is the author ofNot Just Race, Not Just Gender: Black Feminist Readings andSelf-Discovery and Authority in Afro-American Narrative and the editor of Representing Blackness: Issues in Film and Video, African American Writers andNew Essays on Song of Solomon . Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.

"Valerie Smith is an immensely engaging lecturer who draws on multiple media, particularly film, to explore significant cultural questions," said Mary Pat Brady, assistant professor of English and director of the Latino Studies Program at Cornell. "Her work is widely respected by scholars in a variety of disciplines, from political science to religious studies, to ethics, law, literature, sociology and feminist and gender studies."

Brady said that because the civil rights movement continues to have such a profound impact on contemporary life, Smith's analysis of how it is being remembered and studied is of particular significance.

"Her work on gender, race and memory will be of interest to anyone curious about the way societies understand themselves," Brady said.

Smith's lecture is part of the Studies in Critical Race Theory project, coordinated by the Department of English at Cornell. For more information about the series or on Smith's visit, contact Brady at (607) 255-7566 or mpb23@cornell.edu .

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