Best-selling author, scholar, cultural critic Michael Eric Dyson to speak as part of Black History Month events

A talk by popular cultural historian Michael Eric Dyson tops the list of events marking Black History Month in February. Dyson, named by Essence magazine as one of the 50 most-inspiring African-Americans in the United States, is scheduled to speak at 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 9, in the Grand Ballroom of the J. Wayne. Reitz Union. His talk is sponsored in part by the University of Florida Black Student Union and the College of Education.

Dyson’s scholarship has won him admirers across a range of cultural landscapes. Dyson has appeared in a variety of venues, lecturing at hundreds of universities, preaching at countless churches, speaking at numerous conventions and conferences, and going toe-to-toe with journalists and personalities such as Ted Koppel, Tavis Smiley and Dennis Miller. An ordained Baptist preacher and best-selling author of 10 books, Dyson is just as likely to be found giving talks in local bookstores, public school auditoriums, and in jails and prisons.

Dyson’s literary and political efforts have been rewarded with the 1992 magazine award from the National Association of Black Journalists, the prestigious 2004 NAACP Image Award for outstanding nonfiction literary work for his national best-seller Why I Love Black Women, and the 2005 BET/General Motors Black History Makers Award.

Currently the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Dyson has taught at some of the nation’s most distinguished colleges and universities, including Chicago Theological Seminary, Brown University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Columbia University and DePaul University.

# # #

Writer

    Joy L. Rodgers, jrodgers@coe.ufl.edu, (352) 392-0726, ext. 274