Salah Hassan, director of the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell, will deliver the Society for the Humanities' Annual Invitational Lecture March 25.

The free public lecture, "Contemporary 'Islamic' Art and the Global War on Terror," is slated for 4:30 p.m. in Goldwin Smith Hall's Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium. A reception will follow at the A.D. White House.

The society's Annual Invitational Lecture is designed to give the Cornell community a chance to hear distinguished faculty members who may frequently speak at other universities.

Hassan, a Goldwin Smith professor and professor of African and African diaspora art history, is founder and editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, and serves as consulting editor for African Arts and Atlantica.

A curator and art critic, he has curated major international exhibitions including two shows at the 47th and 49th Venice Biennali and "Unpacking Europe" at the Museum Boijmans in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

He has received Ford Foundation grants for the 2000 "Visualizing Blackness" conference at Cornell and to organize African participation at the 49th and 50th Venice Biennali and support companion publications.

He is currently working on a book, "Khartoum School: The Making of the Modern Art Movement in Sudan."