Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of America’s most prominent intellectuals and an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, will give a free public talk at 7:00 pm on Nov. 5th in UNC Asheville’s Kimmel Arena.
This event is free and open to the public.
The author or co-author of 19 books and creator of 14 documentary films, Gates is a leading scholar and analyst of African-American history and culture.
Gates’ talk serves as the keynote for the celebration of 20th anniversary of UNC Asheville’s Center for Diversity Education, which is paying tribute to the work of ASCORE (the Asheville Student Committee on Racial Equality) from 1960-65.
Gates is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and professor of English at Harvard University and founding director of Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. Gates also serves as editor-in-chief of TheRoot.com and oversees the Oxford African American Studies Center, the first comprehensive scholarly online resource in the field. Before joining the faculty of Harvard in 1991, he taught at Yale, Cornell and Duke Universities.
Gates’ prominence is longstanding; he was named one of Time magazine’s “25 Most Influential Americans” in 1997, and one of Ebony magazine’s “Power 100” in 2010 and 2012. He was a member of the first class awarded ‘genius grants’ by the MacArthur Foundation in 1981, and in 1998, Gates became the first African-American scholar to be awarded the National Humanities Medal. He has received 55 honorary degrees.
Well-known for his work on public television, Gates was the executive producer, writer and host of the PBS series Finding Your Roots, and author of a companion book for the series (University of North Carolina Press, 2014). His 2013 PBS documentary series, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, earned the Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Program—Long Form, as well as the Peabody Award and NAACP Image Award.
Gates’ talk is part of the REAL Events series of UNC Asheville’s Cultural Events and Special Academic Programs, for Rediscovering Entertainment, Arts and Learning (REAL). Gates was scheduled to speak at UNC Asheville in February 2014, but the event was postponed due to winter weather.
Kimmel Arena doors will open for this event at 6 p.m. with general admission seating for the public. Floor-level seats will be reserved for honored ASCORE guests and ticketed UNC Asheville students, faculty and staff. Ticketed floor seats not occupied by 6:45 p.m. will be available to the public on a first-come first-served basis. Backpacks and outside food and drink are not permitted in Kimmel Arena. For more information, visit cesap.unca.edu.