Join us as we honor alumni, share important news about the future, and enjoy a keynote lecture over food and drinks.
Distinguished Alumni
Amy Brandt '01 works with teams of staff members across the Midwest within the Campus Ministry of Cru in the area of cross-cultural growth as they seek to share the gospel with students from a variety of cultural contexts.
Karen and Thomas Waters Keynote Lecture
"Memory as Freedom Practice: The Work of Arturo Schomburg"
Dr. Vanessa K. Valdés is an independent scholar whose work focuses on the literatures, visual arts, performances, and histories of Black peoples throughout the Western hemisphere. An engaging speaker, she served as a professor at the City University of New York for seventeen years, from 2007-2024, earning the rank of full professor. The author and editor of seven books, she has written on literatures by Black women in the United States, Cuba, and Brazil as well as the field-defining biography of Arturo Schomburg, namesake of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City. Additionally, she has written on episodes of history on Haiti and Puerto Rico. From 2021-2023, she co-curated Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter, an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and co-authored its exhibition catalogue. In addition to her longstanding relationship with the Schomburg Center, Dr. Valdés has collaborated with Ballet Hispánico for its dance “Buscando a Juan” and Lincoln Center for their Legacies of San Juan Hill series. She is the editor of the Afro-Latinx Futures series at the State University of New York Press and is the co-editor of the Global Black Writers in Translation series at Vanderbilt University Press. To learn more about her, please visit https://drvkv23.com/
This event will be in the Architecture Exhibition Space on University of Detroit Mercy's McNichols Campus.
