There’s A Story In Every Name with Dr. K. Zauditu-Selassie

Guided by the premise that one’s name is their first language, we will begin with the examination of the meaning of each participant’s name and unlock ways of narrating and crafting a story that presents that unique self.

Dr. K. Zauditu-Selassie is a retired Professor of English in the Humanities Department at Coppin State University. A 2009-2010 Fulbright Scholar at the University of Cocody in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, she has been a National Endowment for the Humanities Dissertation fellow, an NEH seminar and institute participant, a National Council for Black Studies fellow at the University of Ghana, Legon, a Fulbright-Hays fellow in Cairo, Egypt, a Fulbright-Hays seminar participant in the Republic of South Africa, a New York University Scholar-In Residence, a Mellon fellow at the Gorée Institute in Dakar, Senegal, and a Fulbright-Hays Scholar in the Republic of South Africa. Dr. Zauditu-Selassie has lived, studied, lectured, and traveled extensively throughout Africa, South America, and the Caribbean.

She is the author of “I Got a Home in Dat Rock: Memory, Orisa, and Yoruba Spiritual Identity in African American Literature” in Orisa: Yoruba Gods and Spiritual Identity in Africa and the Diaspora, as well as several journal articles including, “Step and Fetch It: Zora Neale Hurston’s Reclamation of African Ontology in Their Eyes Were Watching God,” “Women Who Know Things: African Epistemologies, Ecocriticism, and Female Spiritual Authority in the Novels of Toni Morrison,” and “Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone: Using Adinkra Symbols to Frame Critical Agenda in African Diasporic Literature.” She is also the author of a book of critical essays titled, African Spiritual Traditions in the Novels of Toni Morrison, a 2009 publication which won the Toni Morrison Society’s 2010 award for the best single-authored book. Her latest publications are anthologized in both volumes One and Two of The Fire Inside, an anthology edited by Victoria Kennedy, the founder of Zora’s Den, a Black Women’s Writing Collective. Her novel is titled The Second Line. Her forthcoming memoir is titled Caravan: The Amazing Adventures of a Negro Girl Straight out of Compton.

Registration required. Walk-ins will be accepted until we have reached capacity.