Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University professor and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African–American Research, Harvard University, will discuss “African–American Lives: Searching for Our Identity” at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 29, at Penn Statue University in Schwab Auditorium, University Park. This event is free to the public.
For some Americans, the question “Where do I come from?” remains just that: a question. Documents have been destroyed, ancestors lost, history stolen. But genealogical research and path-breaking DNA analysis are providing answers to this question for growing numbers of Americans, including African–Americans. They are now able to answer questions that slavery seemingly made unanswerable. “African–American Lives” is a first step in recovering African American history.
Well known for his work into African American literary history and theory, Gates will share findings from his recent research into African American genealogy. He is most recently the author of “Finding Oprah’s Roots, Finding Your Own,” a meditation on genetics, genealogy and race that is the companion volume to the PBS documentary “Oprah’s Roots.” He is at work on the second installment of the PBS documentary series “African–American Lives.”
He is co-editor with K. Anthony Appiah of “Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience” and author of “Wonders of the African World,” the book companion to the six-hour BBC/PBS series of the same name.
This lecture is part of the Rock Ethics Institute’s “Who Owns Our Species? Past, Present, Future” series, which explores ethical issues around questions of race, group identity, genetic determinism, and ownership of the archaeological record. The series is being made possible, in part, by support from Richard B. Lippin and the late Ronnie Lippin, the Barbara Jordan Lecture Series under Penn State’s Africana Research Center, Department of Anthropology, Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, and Social Science Research Institute. Rock Ethics Institute events also are made possible with the support of a gift from Doug and Julie Rock.
