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Charisse Jones and Kumea Shorter-Gooden,
authors of the book Shifting: The
Double Lives of Black Women in America, will deliver the
university’s fifth annual Mary Frances Early Lecture on March 29
at 7 p.m. in room 213 of Sanford Hall.
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Charisse Jones |
This year’s lecture will focus on the identity of African-American
women in today’s society and is sponsored in part by Graduate
and Professional Scholars at UGA. It is free and open to the public
and a reception will follow.
The lecture is named in honor of the first African-American graduate
of UGA, Mary Frances Early, who earned a master of music education
in 1962. She currently is chairperson of the music department and
a professor of music at Clark Atlanta University. Early played an
integral role in the desegregation of UGA. Valerie White and Tracey
Ford, two former GAPS members, established the Early Lecture in
1999.
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Kumea Shorter-Gooden |
Jones and Shorter-Gooden have toured the country together presenting
their work at seminars and conferences. Their book is based on the
African-American Women’s Voices Project. According to the
authors’ Web site (http://blackwomenshifting.com/),
Shifting reveals that a large number of African-American women feel
pressure to compromise their true selves as they navigate America’s
racial and gender bigotry.
“They shift ‘white’ as they head to work in the
morning and ‘black’ as they travel back home each night,”
they say. “They shift inward, internalizing the searing pain
of negative stereotypes they encounter daily. Sometimes they shift
outward by fighting back.”
Jones, a resident of New Jersey, is an award-winning journalist
who is currently a New York correspondent for USA
Today. She is a former staff writer for the Los
Angeles Times and the New York
Times and is a contributing writer for Essence
magazine. While at the Los Angeles
Times, she co-wrote one of 10 articles that won a Pulitzer
Prize for coverage of the L.A. riots.
A resident of Southern California, Shorter-Gooden is a professor
and coordinator of the multicultural community/clinical psychology
emphasis area at the California School of Professional Psychology
(Los Angeles campus) of Alliant International University. Her research
and publications have been in the area of identity development and
psychotherapy with African Americans. She is also a consulting editor
for Professional Psychology: Research
and Practice. A licensed psychologist, she has a psychotherapy
and organizational consultation practice.
GAPS was founded in 1984 to support underrepresented graduate and
professional students at UGA.
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