Emory’s James Weldon Johnson Institute (JWJI) opens the Fall 2016 Race and Difference Colloquium Series next week with a schedule that spotlights award-winning authors presenting recent scholarship on key issues of race and ethnicity.

The colloquium series, which brings a rich roster of weekly speakers to the Emory campus, will feature local and national scholars discussing academic research on contemporary questions of race and intersecting dimensions of difference, says Kali-Ahset Amen, JWJI assistant director.

"This year’s colloquium series features some of the latest and most important books exploring topics of race and difference from disciplines as diverse as dance and queer studies to indigenous and Asian American studies,” she says.

The lectures will address novel approaches to the study of modern civil rights, including Megan Ming Francis’ multiple-award winning “Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State” (Cambridge University Press) and Anthony Reed’s critically acclaimed “Freedom Time: The Poetics and Politics of Black Experimental Writing” (Johns Hopkins University Press). Books will be available for purchase at select colloquium events.

Presentations begin Monday, Sept. 12, and will take place from noon to 1:30 p.m. every Monday in the Jones Room of the Robert W. Woodruff Library. Lunch is provided and an RSVP is requested.

The series is co-sponsored by the JWJI, the Robert W. Woodruff Library and the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript and Rare Book Library. For more information or to register, visit here.

This year’s roster of speakers includes:

• Sept. 12 — “Non/Racial Imaginaries and Drug Discovery in South Africa,” Anne Pollock, associate professor of science, technology and culture, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Sept. 19 — “Gender, Garveyism, and the Racial Geographies of Belonging in Costa Rica,” Asia Leeds, assistant professor of African diaspora and the world, Spelman College
• Sept. 26 — “Whitewashing the South: White Memories of Segregation and Civil Rights,” Kristen Lavelle, assistant professor of sociology, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
• Oct. 3 — “Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction,” Andre Carrington, assistant professor of English and philosophy, Drexel University
• Oct. 17 — “The Urgency of Now: Black Experimental Writing and the Art of the Present,” Anthony Reed, associate professor of English and African American studies, Yale University
• Oct. 24 — “Dark Matter in B-Boying Cyphers,” Imani Kai-Johnson, assistant professor of dance, University of California Riverside
• Oct. 31 — “The Cosmopolitan Choctaw: Literature, Indigenous Knowledge, Native Histories,” LeAnne Howe, Eidson Distinguished Professor in American Literature, University of Georgia
• Nov. 7 — “Prison and Social Death,” Joshua M. Price, associate professor of sociology, SUNY Binghamton
• Nov. 14 — “Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State,” Megan Ming Francis, assistant professor of political science, University of Washington
• Nov. 21 — “Black Queer Poetics: Affirming Self, Spirit and Sexuality,” McKinley Melton, assistant professor of English, Gettysburg College
• Nov. 28 — “How Asians became America’s Model Minority,” Ellen Wu, associate professor of history, director of Asian American Studies Program, Indiana University