The Inaugural Anna Julia Cooper Lecture Featuring Karla Holloway – February 23rd, 7pm
“When Race Matters: Private Bodies, Public Texts or: Why Henrietta Lacks Did Not Need ‘The Help’.”
Karla Holloway Speaking at the Event
Join the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Gender, Race and Politics in the South for our inaugural Anna Julia Cooper lecture, featuring Duke University’s Professor of English and Law Karla Holloway. Holloway will discuss her new book, Private Bodies, Public Texts: Race, Gender and a Cultural Bioethics (Duke University Press, 2011), an exploration of the complex interlocking systems of race, gender, law and medicine that includes a discussion of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
The lecture will be on Thursday, February 23rd at 7pm in the Kendall Cram Room of the LBC.
Karla FC Holloway Biography
Karla FC Holloway is the James B. Duke Professor of English at Duke University, where she also holds appointments in the Law School, Women’s Studies and African and African American Studies. Her research and teaching interests focus on African American cultural studies, biocultural studies, gender, ethics and law; within these interests, she specializes in literature. The author of eight books, Holloway’s most recent publication is Private Bodies, Public Texts: Race, Gender & a Cultural Bioethics. In the book, Holloway investigates instances where private medical information and situations are forced into the public sphere, finding that the resulting drama is often played out on the bodies of women of color. The book is a call for a cultural bioethics that is accountable and attentive to historical and social inequalities in medicine and law. Holloway proposes literary narratives as a conceptual anchor for discussions of race, gender, bioethics and the right to privacy. Some of her past books include BookMarks: Reading in Black and White, Passed On: African American Mourning Stories: A Memorial and Codes of Conduct: Race, Ethics and the Color of Our Character.
Karla Holloway
At Duke, Holloway has served as Dean of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Chair of Duke’s Appointments, Promotion and Tenure Committee and a member of the Academic Council. She serves on the boards of the Greenwall Foundation’s Advisory Board in Bioethics, Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies and the Princeton University Council on the Study of Women and Gender. She is also the founding co-director of the John Hope Franklin Center and the Franklin Humanities Institute, and an affiliated faculty with the Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life and the Trent Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities. More information on these institutions can be found below.