The 2026 annual Powell-Edwards public lecture features a conversation between Marina Magloire, Ph.D., of Emory University and E. Gaynell Sherrod, Ph.D., of VCUarts. 

Magloire, a literary scholar, and Sherrod, a choreographer, dancer and dance scholar, have each published books on the pioneering anthropologists and artists Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) and Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960). Their books explore how these women, among others, mediated the global influence of Afro-diasporic spiritual traditions including Haitian Vodou. 

The conversation will address how artistic, spiritual and scholarly practices influence one another in the work of the scholar-artists they have studied, and in their own work.

Speakers

Marina Magloire, Ph.D., is author of "We Pursue our Magic: A Spiritual History of Black Feminism," (UNC Press, 2023), winner of the 2024 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize from the National Women's Studies Association. A public scholar as well as a professor of English literature at Emory University, she is a contributor to Jewish Currents, the Nation, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her next book, "Memory Work," is under contract with W.W. Norton.

E. Gaynell Sherrod, Ph.D., a professor of dance at VCU, is a Fulbright-Hayes scholar in African diasporan dance. Her work TWINE! earned her a Sage and John Cowles Residency at the University of Minnesota Dance. Recently, she collaborated with acclaimed photographer Dawoud Bey and created the choreo-sonic (sound score) for his film 350,000, which is featured in his larger project – Dawoud Bey: Elegy (commissioned by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts). Dr. Sherrod is the author of "Katherine Dunham and The Dance Griots: Reading the Invisible Script" (Mellen Press: Lewiston, New York, September 2022).