Smith College Assistant Professor of Afro-American studies, Professor Daphne Lamothe, will be the keynote speaker at this year’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day ceremony.   Professor Lamothe is the parent of two Williston students.

A member of Smith’s faculty since 2004, Professor Lamothe teaches classes on African-American literature, 1746 to 1900 and the Harlem Renaissance.  According to the Smith website, she plans to teach Introduction to Black Culture and Literatures of African American Migration in the future.

Professor Lamothe received her B.A. from Yale University and her Ph.D. in English from the University of California Berkley.  Her book, Inventing the New Negro: Narrative, Culture, and Ethnography, was published in 2008 by University of Pennsylvania Press.

Lee D. Baker, the dean of academic affairs at Duke University, reviewed Inventing the Negro calling it brave and thoughtful.  “Daphne Lamothe has brought together history of science, literary criticism, and the analysis of a seasoned scholar of the New Negro movement in a way that simply has never been done before,” he said.

The lecture will take place at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, January 21 in the Williston gymnasium.  The event is not open to the public.