Category: Events
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Black History Month: Audre Lorde
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Read More: Black History Month: Audre LordeAudre Lorde was a black writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, teacher, and civil rights activist, who described herself as a “lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.” Her poems and prose largely dealt with issues related to civil rights, feminism, and the exploration of black female identity. Jerome Brooks says in Black Women Writers (1950-1980):…
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Black History Month: Ta-Nehisi Coates
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Read More: Black History Month: Ta-Nehisi CoatesTa-Nehisi Coates writes frankly about race in contemporary America, directly addressing timely issues from racial bias in urban policing to President Obama’s legacy as our nation’s first black president. The MacArthur Foundation, which granted Coates a Genius Grant in 2015, wrote that Coates’ work “subtly embeds the present—in the form…
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Black History Month: Maya Angelou
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Read More: Black History Month: Maya Angelou“A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” Writer, poet, and civil rights activist Maya Angelou had a powerful story to tell. She led an enormously influential life, using her 1969 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings autobiography to share her…
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Black History Month: Malcolm X
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Read More: Black History Month: Malcolm XMalcolm X was a strong voice for human rights activism and an African-American Muslim minister born in 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. He laid the foundation for the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 70s. Unlike Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent protests, the Black Power movement incited more violence and…
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Black History Month: Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Read More: Black History Month: Martin Luther King, Jr.Nearly 50 years after Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, the nation still celebrates the impact he made fighting against black discrimination. For MLK Day on January 16th, over 1000 people showed up in Old Town Fort Collins to join in the MLK Day March [source http://source.colostate.edu/mlk-day-march-celebration-jan-16/]. The March ended at…
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“What Do You Do with a B.A. in English?”: An Interview with Career Education Manager Katie Russo
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Read More: “What Do You Do with a B.A. in English?”: An Interview with Career Education Manager Katie Russo~from intern Joyce Bohling Often, when I tell people I’m an English major, I’m met with everything from genuine curiosity to outright dismay about my job prospects. In these conversations, I’m often reminded of the opening line from one of my favorite musicals, Avenue Q: “What do you do with…
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Black History Month: Octavia Butler
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Read More: Black History Month: Octavia ButlerAuthor Octavia Butler paved the way for African-American science fiction authors. Born in 1947 in Pasadena, California, Butler conquered obstacle after obstacle, from losing her father, living with dyslexia, and fighting stigmas against both women and African American writers. At the young age of 10, she begged her mother for…
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Black History Month: Zora Neale Hurston
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Read More: Black History Month: Zora Neale HurstonAlthough Zora Neale Hurston is most known for her novel Their Eyes Are Watching God, published in 1937, she authored numerous works of literature in the first half of the 20th century, including novels, short stories, plays, a collection of southern African-American folklore, and an autobiography. Hurston was born in…
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Black History Month: Yusef Komunyakaa
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Read More: Black History Month: Yusef KomunyakaaPulitzer Prize winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa isn’t just an important author and relevant figure in the celebration of Black History month, he’s important to us personally — as he is an English department alumnus and beloved member of our “Ramily.” Komunyakaa was born and grew up in the small town of…
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Black History Month: Gwendolyn Brooks
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Read More: Black History Month: Gwendolyn BrooksAccording a biography on the Poetry Foundation, “Gwendolyn Brooks is one of the most highly regarded, highly influential, and widely read poets of 20th-century American poetry.” Most notably, she was the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize. She wrote articles, short stories, poetry (publishing more than 20 collections…