AAEP Department Chair Joni Acuff was selected as a 2022-23 Inaugural Lecturer. Inaugural Lectures celebrate arts and humanities faculty who have been promoted to the rank of professor. Joined by Treva Lindsey (from the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies), Acuff delivered her lecture titled “We Are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For: The Futures of Black Feminist Art and Activism.” In this non-traditional lecture, Acuff and Lindsey engaged in an expansive and dynamic conversation about the genealogies, legacies and futures of Black feminist art and activism. Using their respective journeys within the Black feminist tradition, they explored the multitudes of world-making practices made possible by Black feminist studies as well as the challenges confronted by those committed to addressing social disparities, inequities, and injustices.
Through their bodies of work and the multigenerational bodies of knowledge upon which Black feminist inquiry, imagination, and artmaking continue to thrive, they posit that Black feminisms remain integral to contemporary struggles for justice.