This coming October 10th and 11th, Florida State University will be hosting poet Nikki Giovanni and scholar Fred Moten for an event and conversation regarding the future of black artistic expression and activism.
The event was organized by assistant professors Alison Sperling and L. Lamar Wilson. In a recent WFSU, Sperling said their goals are “to engage young people and demonstrate this once in a generation conversation.”
The assistant professors say the personal and public growth that both Giovanni and Moten undertook throughout their lives and careers can inspire young people and show them “that who you are is not who you have to remain,” said Wilson.
The event begins on Thursday, October 10th at 3 p.m. in the Conradi Theatre, with Fred Moten’s lecture called “A Forward Thrust of Blackness”. This is followed by a 7 p.m. screening of the documentary “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project” at the Challenger Learning Center Planetarium.
“Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project” was initially released on streaming service MAX under HBO Documentaries and won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking in 2024. Following the screening Nikki Giovani will be available for a Q&A.
The event continues and concludes, on Friday the 11th at 5:30 p.m. in the Florida State University Student Union, culminating in a wide-ranging conversation between luminaries Nikki Giovani and Fred Moten.
If you would like to hear more about this event or from Professors Sperling and Wilson, WFSU sat down with them for a conversation on a recent episode of our show “Speaking Of”.
https://news.wfsu.org/show/speaking-of-full-program/2024-09-19/speaking-of-episode-8
