Phillip Luke Sinitiere to Present Du Bois Center Senior Research Fellow Lecture

The UMass Libraries will present Phillip Luke Sinitiere as he gives his Du Bois Center Senior Research Fellow Lecture, "Living in Those Boxes: Archive Stories from Researching W. E. B. Du Bois," Wednesday, July 30, from noon-1 p.m. in room 2220 on the 22nd floor of Du Bois Library.

Sinitiere is the senior research fellow at UMass Amherst's W. E. B. Du Bois Center and professor of history and humanities at the College of Biblical Studies, a predominately African American school located in Houston.

In his lecture, Sinitiere will share archive stories about "fascinating discoveries that connect the historical dots of Du Bois's life through delightful serendipity." He will also discuss recent archival dead ends he has encountered, "where the absence of documents or artifacts does not foreclose analysis but creates the intellectual conditions to ask more probing questions."

His presentation will conclude by chronicling the history of a 1957 ceremony honoring Du Bois at the Schomburg Collection, which will feature the unveiling of a newly digitized audio recording of Du Bois's lecture at this Harlem event.

Sinitiere also serves on the editorial board of Global Black Thought, a brand-new peer reviewed journal launched by the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS). A scholar of American religious history and African American Studies, his latest book is "Forging Freedom in W. E. B. Du Bois's Twilight Years: No Deed but Memory" (University Press of Mississippi, 2023). He is currently finishing a book on the history of W. E. B. Du Bois's archives and a volume of scholarly essays on the work of Shirley Graham Du Bois.

More information about the Du Bois Center Senior Research Fellow Lecture can be found on the Libraries website.