In 1985, Dr. Thomas was appointed president of Central State University. He was the first alumnus of the school to serve as university president. Dr. Thomas served as president of the university until 1995.
Rita Dove, the Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia, received the 2022 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry for lifetime achievement from the Library of Congress. Professor Dove has published 11 collections of poetry. She served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995 and won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1987.
Gwendolyn Pough, dean’s professor of the humanities and professor of women’s and gender studies in the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University in New York, will serve a six-year term as president-elect, president, and past-president, of the Rhetoric Society of America, beginning in July.
The Joseph B. and Toby Gittler Prize honors those who have made outstanding and lasting scholarly contributions to racial, ethnic, and religious relationships. The award and a $25,000 prize will be presented at a ceremony on the Brandeis campus this coming fall.
Cathy J. Cohen, the David and Mary Winton Green Distinguished Service Professor in the department of political science at the University of Chicago, received the 2021 Hanes Walton, Jr. Career Award from the American Political Science Association. The award honors a political scientist whose lifetime of distinguished scholarship has made significant contributions to the understanding of racial and ethnic politics.
Rebecca Wanzo, professor and chair of women, gender, and sexuality studies in the College of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has won two major awards in the field of comic book studies for her book The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging.
Here is this week’s news of grants or gifts to historically Black colleges and universities or for programs of particular interest to African Americans in higher education.
Taking on new positions in the academic world are Tammy Kernodle, at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, Titus Underwood at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Leroy Long III at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Dayton Beach, Florida, and Amoaba Gooden at Kent State University in Ohio.
Dr. Fleetwod's book - Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration - which took nine years to complete, is based on scores of interviews with incarcerated people and their families, prison staff, activists, and other observers. It explores the importance of people in prison creating art as a means to survive incarceration.
Ronald A. Crutcher became the tenth president of the University of Richmond in 2015. He also serves as a professor of music at the university. When a successor takes the helm, Dr. Crutcher will take a sabbatical and then return to the faculty as a university professor.
Amidst what may be the greatest wave of protests for racial justice ever seen in the United States, it is not surprising that there have been reactions from those who hold bigoted or racist views.
Dr. Epsy currently serves as provost and vice president of academic affairs at Pfeiffer University, which operates three campuses in Charlotte, Raleigh, and Misenheimer, North Carolina. She has been on the staff at Pfeiffer University for more than two decades.
Rita Dove, Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia, served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995 and won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1987. She is the only poet to receive the National Humanities Medal and the National Medal of Arts.
In this role, the University of Virginia's Professor Dove will select a poem from new or forthcoming collections that will be published in the New York Times Magazine each Sunday. These new duties will not affect her role at the University of Virginia.
David G. Carter was the former chancellor of the Connecticut State University System and former president of Eastern Connecticut State University. He was the first African American to serve as president of a four-year institution of higher education in Connecticut.
The Stone Award was established in 2011 to highlight the work of the creative writing program at Oregon State University's School of Writing. Literature, and Film. The award comes with a $20,000 prize. Professor Dove, the Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia, will accept the award next spring in Oregon.
Dr. Crutcher currently is the co-chair of Liberal Education and America's Promise (LEAP). From 2004 to 2014, Dr. Crutcher was president of Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts.
Tamika Richeson, a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Virginia, is researching records in the National Archives detailing 500 arrests of Black women in Washington in the years 1861 and 1862.