Guest Speakers

On February 26 at 6 p.m. in the Blue Ridge Room of Highsmith Union, author Psyche Williams-Forson will delve into the ways Black women have used, and continue to use, food to shape cuisines in and beyond the south, while defining their sense of self.

Using sound, virtual, visual, and written evidence, this immersive conversation will focus on Black women’s labor with food and thus their influence and power, publicly and privately. 

The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1tdLCFoSmruYQKuCFCjCqIyJtn3ew8CL_0YjFbKVV8XA/edit

This is the final event in the Thomas Howerton “Diverse Roots at the Common Table: Culinary Conversations in the American South” series. Malaprop’s will be attending the event and selling books.

About the Speaker

Psyche Williams-Forson is professor and chair of the Department of American Studies at the University of Maryland College Park. She is author of several books including the award winning “Eating While Black: Food Shaming and Race in America” (winner of the James Beard Media Award for Food Issues and Advocacy, 2023) and “Building Houses out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, and Power.” Williams-Forson is known nationally and internationally for her work in building the scholarly subfield of Black food studies, and she has published extensively in this area and been interviewed and cited widely.

Michael Dowdy will give a reading from his new book Tell Me About Your Bad Guys: Fathering in Anxious Times, a collection of essays just published by University of Nebraska Press in their American Lives Series. Critiquing his own fathering practices, Dowdy’s essays move between simplicity—being present for his daughter—and complexity—considering the harrowing present of entrenched misogyny, school shootings, climate change, and other threats to childing and fathering with love, optimism, and joy.