GSF's Jennifer Nash to deliver Langford Lecture

Jen Nash

Jennifer C. Nash, who has just joined the department as the new Jean Fox O’Barr Chair of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, has been selected to deliver a prestigious Langford Lecture this year.

Named after former Provost and Divinity School Dean Thomas Langford, the lectureship was established in 2000 to honor Langford’s commitment to the highest university values of scholarship, teaching, collegiality, and promotion of faculty excellence and community.  Each year, the Langford Lectureship series afford Duke faculty an opportunity to hear about ongoing scholarly activities of recently promoted or hired colleagues.

Through three books, five edited volumes and journal issues, and numerous influential articles and book chapters, Professor Nash has powerfully shaped three fields:  feminist theory, African American Studies, and Black feminist theory.  Her first two books, The Black Body in Ecstasy: Reading Race, Reading Pornography (Duke University Press, 2014) and Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality (Duke University Press, 2019) have both garnered top prizes, including the 2015 Alan Bray Memorial Book Prize, from the Modern Language Association, and the 2019 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Prize, presented by the National Women's Studies Association.  Her third book, Birthing Black Mothers, is forthcoming with Duke University Press.

“I feel immensely fortunate to have her as a colleague,” said GSF director Jocelyn Olcott.  “She really is the model of a field-defining scholar, a dedicated teacher, and a gracious colleague.  I can’t imagine anyone more suitable for both the O’Barr Chair and the Langford Lecture.”

Professor Nash's lecture will be given in April to a small group of faculty colleagues from across the university.