Speakers
Keynote Speaker Dr. Tommy Curry
Tommy J. Curry is an Afr
ican American scholar, author and professor of philosophy. He holds a Personal Chair in Africana philosophy and Black male studies at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests are 19th century ethnology, Critical Race Theory & Black Male Studies. He is the author of The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood (Temple University Press 2017), which won the 2018 American Book Award. In 2019 he became the editor of the first book series dedicated to the study of Black males entitled Black Male Studies: A Series Exploring the Paradoxes of Racially Subjugated Males on Temple University Press. Dr. Curry’s research has been recognized by Diverse as placing him among the Top 15 Emerging Scholars in the United States in 2018, and his public intellectual work earned him the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy’s Alain Locke Award in 2017.
Keynote Speaker Kiese Laymon
Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. In his observant, often hilarious work, Laymon does battle with the personal and the political: race and family, body and shame, 
poverty and place. His savage humor and clear-eyed perceptiveness have earned him comparisons to Ta-Nehisi Coates, Alice Walker, and Mark Twain. He is the author of the award-winning memoir Heavy, the groundbreaking essay collection How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, and the genre-defying novel Long Division.
Laymon’s IndieBound bestselling memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir, won the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the 2018 Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, the Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times. A personal narrative that illuminates national failures, Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable—an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family. In a starred review, Kirkus wrote, “Laymon skillfully couches his provocative subject matter in language that is pyrotechnic and unmistakably his own…. A dynamic memoir that is unsettling in all the best ways.” Heavy was named a best book of 2018 by the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, NPR, Broadly, Buzzfeed, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly. The audiobook, read by the author, was named the Audible 2018 Audiobook of the Year.
When Laymon was a contributing editor at Gawker, he wrote an essay called “How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America.” This harrowing piece, which describes four incidents in which Laymon was threatened with a gun, evolved into a collection of lacerating essays on race, violence, celebrity, family, and creativity. How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America “rarely smiles” and “never relents,” writes Oscar Quine in The Independent: “What this book really does brilliantly is elucidate the depreciated nature of a life lived as a Black American.” In 2020, Laymon released a revised and expanded edition which The New York Times raved “made a once solid collection superb…. Laymon [is] in full bloom as an artist and introspector.”
Laymon’s novel, the NAACP Image Award-winning Long Division, combines elements of science fiction, satire, and social commentary into a book that The Wall Street Journal, called “funny, astute and searching.” In Long Division, 14-year-old City, a newly minted YouTube star, is sent to stay with family in rural Melahatchie, Mississippi. What happens next transgresses the boundaries of fiction and reality, present and past, as City travels through time. Kirkus called it “hilarious, moving and occasionally dizzying,” and Booklist noted that Long Division “elegantly showcases Laymon’s command of voice and storytelling skill in a tale that is at once dreamlike and concrete, personal and political.” The novel was honored with the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing in 2014, and was shortlisted for a number of other awards, including The Believer Book Award, the Morning News Tournament of Books, and the Ernest J. Gaines Fiction Award.
Laymon is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, Esquire, ESPN The Magazine, NPR, Colorlines, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Ebony, Guernica, The Oxford American, Lit Hub, and many others in addition to Gawker. A member of Black Artists for Freedom, he was named to the Ebony Magazine Power 100 in 2015, and selected as a member of the Root 100 in 2013 and 2014. He is a graduate of Oberlin College and holds an MFA in creative writing from Indiana University. He founded the Catherine Coleman Initiative for the Arts and Social Justice, a program aimed at getting Mississippi kids and their parents, more comfortable reading, writing, revising and sharing. He is at work on several new projects including the long poem, Good God; the horror novel, And So On; the children’s book, City Summer, Country Summer; and the personal narrative about family and Mississippi, I Don’t Know What You Mean.
Plenary Panelists
Dr. Daniel Black is a nationally renowned, award-winning novelist. His works are inspired by African-American life, history, and heritage in the South—encompassing themes of race, religion, and sexuality. Upon graduation from Clark College (now Clark Atlanta University) in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1988, he was awarded a full fellowship to Temple University, where he earned a master’s in 1990 and a doctorate in 1992, both in African-American studies. Black also earned the prestigious Oxford Modern British Studies fellowship, leading him to study at Oxford University in 1987. He studied under Sonia Sanchez, who many consider to be the poet laureate of the Black Arts Movement.
Black, who lives in Atlanta, is a professor of African-American studies and English at his alma mater Clark Atlanta University and at Morehouse College, where he has mentored burgeoning writers and scholars since 1993. Black is also the founder of the Ndugu and Nzinga Rites of Passage Nation, a mentoring society that teaches character and the principles to African-American youth. Within that society, Black is known as Omotosho Jojomani.
Black credits his great-grandmother for inspiring him to write stories that work to transform and uplift humanity. His literary works include They Tell Me of a Home (2005), The Sacred Place (2007), Perfect Peace (2010), Twelve Gates to the City (2011), The Coming (2015), and Listen to the Lambs (2016)—all published by St. Martin’s Press. Black has been nominated for the Townsend Literary Prize, the Ernest J. Gaines Award, the Ferro-Grumley Literary Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Georgia Author of the Year Prize; in addition, he was awarded the Writer’s Award from the Middle-Atlantic Writers Association.
Dr. O'Shan D. Gadsden is a sociocultural critic, thought leader, public scholar, and published author who has presented his work and ideas at many local, regional, and national conferences over the course if his career. He believes that his life's purpose is to assist individuals to walk in their authentic selves and work through any unresolved "material" that impedes their highest level of individual and relational consciousness. He lives by the quote: "What you are seeking is already seeking you!"
Dr. Gadsden earned his PhD in Counseling Psychology from Howard University's APA accredited program. His dissertation explored the relationship between gender role conflict, father absence, religious background, and hypermasculinity with African-American adult males. Prior to completing his doctoral degree he received is MA in Clinical Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University. His thesis focused on the relationship between depression and intimate partner violence with African-American adult women. Prior to his graduate work he attended Metropolitan College of New York City and obtained a B.P.S. in Human Services.
While a PhD student, O'Shan served as a teacher's assistant and psychological associate/consultant. He completed his APA accredited pre-doctoral internship at the University of Delaware's Center for Counseling and Development. Following this, he began post-doctoral training as a Clinical Fellow at the JFK Behavioral Health Center in Philadelphia, PA. While serving in this capacity, Dr. Gadsden was recruited and subsequently accepted his first academic appointment as an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at Alliant International University-California School of Professional Psychology, Fresno, CA in their APA accredited clinical doctoral program. Dr. Gadsden has enjoyed several faculty positions teaching in both graduate and undergraduate programs. As an academic he has mentored and supervised student’s research; served on a number dissertation committees; and presented his work and ideas at local, regional, and national conventions. Dr. Gadsden has published several empirical and public scholarship articles and book chapters. He is currently working on his first book manuscript entitled, “Going further than our fathers: And other essays on loving and living—in consciousness for men of color.” Dr. Gadsden is particularly interested in the relationship between black masculinity development and its impact on how African-American adult men understand and navigate emotional closeness in romantic relationships, the clinical utility of infusing nontraditional spiritual frameworks in treatment, and the clinical and organizational utility of infusing relational-psychoanalytic theory when working with underserved populations and small businesses. Dr. Gadsden firmly believes that the academic domain is but another platform for intersubjective constructive engagement that is both intersectional and spiritual in nature.
Dr. T. Hasan Johnson is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies at California State University, Fresno. He founded numerous Fresno State programs including the Africana Studies Online Teleconference on Black Male Studies, the ONYX Black Male Film Festival, The Black Popular Culture Lecture Series and Online Research Archive (curator), The ONYX Black Male COllective, The Annual ASHÉ: Sankofa Black Film Festival, The Annual Africana Studies Black Gender Conference, The African American Edge Initiative (co-founder), The Africana Studies Black Elder Project, and the Hip-Hop Research & Interview Project.
He is the developer of the concept of “Black Masculinism” and frequently publishes on anti-Black misandry, anti-Black male heterophobia, intra-racial misandry, and White supremacy. His first book, You Must Learn!: A Primer for the Study of Hip-Hop (2012), examines the socio-political histories that contribute to the development of Hip-Hop culture and creates new theoretical frameworks for understanding its development. His forthcoming book, preliminarily titled, She Hate Me: A Case for Black Masculinism, Black Male Studies, and A New Paradigm for Studying Black Males, focuses on creating a new paradigm for studying Black males that challenges widely accepted stereotypes regarding Black males with contemporary data and new conceptual theory.
Dr. Johnson has made contributions to esteemed journals such as The International Journal of Africana Studies, Spectrum: A Journal for Black Men, and books such as Jay-Z: Essays on Hip Hop's Philosopher King, Icons of Hip-Hop, and Dropping Knowledge: Hip-Hop Pedagogy in the Academy. He also created his own academic blog at: www.NewBlackMasculinities.wordpress.com. He was conferred both the Provost’s Award for Promising New Faculty and the Inaugural Fresno State Talks! Lecture Series Award in 2013 and was awarded the prestigious Ford Dissertation Diversity Fellowship in 2006. In summer 2019, he started his own online radio show entitled The Onyx Report with Dr. T. Hasan Johnson.
Dr. Jamel K. Donnor will serve as the plenary panel's moderator. Jamel K. Donnor is an Associate Professor of Education with affiliations in American Studies, Asian & Pacific Islander American (APIA) Studies, and the Center for Racial and Social Justice at William & Mary. Dr. Donnor’s work on race and inequality in education covers an array of topics, including critical race theory, school desegregation, intercollegiate athletics, and affirmative action in higher education. He has coedited several books including: Scandals in College Sports: Legal, Ethical, and Policy Case Studies, Critical Race Theory in Education: All God's Children Got a Song (2nd, ed,), The Charter School Solution: Distinguishing Fact from Rhetoric, and The Resegregation of Schools: Race and Education in the Twenty-First Century. Dr. Donnor has also served as a rebuttal expert in Clark v. State Public Charter School Authority. Dr. Donnor’s research has been published in Teachers College Record, Educational Policy, Race, Ethnicity, and Education, Peabody Journal of Education, the International Journal of Qualitative Studies, and the Journal of Urban Education. Dr. Donnor has been quoted in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, OZY, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
