WHO:             Featured speakers and invited guests:

                        Melissa Harris Perry, MSNBC host, Tulane University professor of political science and author of Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes and Black Women in America

                        Noliwe Rooks, author of Hair Raising: Beauty Culture and African-American Women

                        Tiffany M. Gill, author of Beauty Shop Politics: African-American Women’s Activism in the Beauty Industry

                        Tanisha Ford, assistant professor of women, gender and sexuality studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst

                        Patrice Grell Yuri, creator of Afrobella blog

                        Glenford Nunez, photographer and creator of “Coiffure Project,” portraits of black women and their natural hair

WHAT:           “The Politics of Black Women’s Hair” symposium

WHEN:           Friday, March 1, 
9 a.m.-5 p.m. 

WHERE:         Claudia Cohen Hall, 249 S. 36th St. on the Penn campus

The free, public symposium will bring together scholars, artists, feminists and the public for a discussion on the social and political statements of black women’s hair, whether styled “natural,” straightened, braided, permed or tucked under wigs or weaves.

Registration is encouraged at https://africana.sas.upenn.edu/center/politics-black-womens-hair-symposium-friday-march-1-2013. The event can be viewed live online at https://africana.sas.upenn.edu/.

The symposium is sponsored by Penn’s Center for Africana Studies in conjunction with the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Gender, Race and Politics in the South at Newcomb College Institute, Tulane University.  It is co-sponsored with Penn’s Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Program and Penn’s Alice Paul Center for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality.