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Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina headshot 215x269

Professor Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina

Black History Month: Professor Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina to hold public lecture

Professor Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina of Univeristy of Massachusetts Amherst will be holding a public lecture as part of the Black History Month series of events hosted by the University of Exeter, College of Humanities.

The lecture, entitled “Sarah E. Farro: What a newly discovered African American writer can tell us about the British Victorian Novel,” will explore the life and work of a newly-rediscovered African-American writer, and what we can learn from it about the Victorian novel.

A former honorary fellow at Exeter, Professor Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina is Paul Murray Kendall Chair in Biography at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Professor Gerzina is a distinguished scholar of both Black British and African American history and literature. She has written seven books, including Black England: Life Before Emancipation (1995) and Mr. and Mrs. Prince: How an Extraordinary Family Moved out of Slavery and into Legend (2018).

In 2016 she presented “Britain’s Black Past” for BBC Radio 4, and is the editor of a new collection of essays based on the series, also called Britain’s Black Past (Liverpool University Press, 2000).

In October 2020, she will be appearing on BBC Radio 4’s Private Passions, and will be launching a new podcast on the black presence in British art, called BP2: Black People in British Portraiture, with guests including actor Paterson Joseph (Peep Show, The Leftovers).

Professor Gerzina's lecture, entitled “Sarah E. Farro: What a newly discovered African American writer can tell us about the British Victorian Novel,” will be held on Friday 23rd October 2020 (17:30-19:00), via Microsoft Teams and anyone can attend by clicking the link below and following the instructions:

Join Lecture

To join the lecture you will need to have Microsoft Teams installed on your device, which can be downloaded here. We recommend doing this ahead of the lecture.

Date: 30 September 2020

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