Contact: John Natale at 617-373-2802

What: The Northeastern University Women’s Studies Program will launch its 2007-08 “Gender Matters at Northeastern” lecture series this Thursday. The series will feature distinguished guest speakers from Northeastern who specialize in the convergence of gender, race, class, ethnicity, and religion.

Who: Carla Kaplan, Northeastern’s Davis Distinguished Professor of American Literature, will give the series’ first lecture, discussing themes from her forthcoming book, “Miss Ann in Harlem: the White Women of the Black Harlem Renaissance.” Kaplan is noted for her work on novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, a prominent voice on African American culture during the Harlem Renaissance. President Joseph Aoun will provide opening remarks.

When: Thursday, February 8 from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m.

Where: The John D. O’Bryant African-American Institute’s Cabral Center in West Village F, located on 40 Leon Street, Boston.

For more information, please contact Lihua Wang, PhD at 617-373-4984 or l.wang@neu.edu. Co-sponsored by Northeastern’s English and African-American Studies departments, the Gender Matters at Northeastern lecture is free of charge and will be followed by a short reception.

About the Speaker: Carla Kaplan is a Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Northeastern University. She has published four books, most recently “Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters,” which was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award and was listed as a notable book of the year by The New York Times. She is a member of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, has been a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow, and is currently a fellow at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Kaplan will also hold a Guggenheim fellowship and a fellowship at Harvard University’s DuBois Institute for African and African American Research during the 2007-2008 academic year.

About Northeastern: Founded in 1898, Northeastern University is a private research university located in the heart of Boston. Northeastern is a leader in interdisciplinary research, urban engagement, and the integration of classroom learning with real-world experience. The university’s distinctive cooperative education program, where students alternate semesters of full-time study with semesters of paid work in fields relevant to their professional interests and major, is one of the largest and most innovative in the world. The University offers a comprehensive range of undergraduate and graduate programs leading to degrees through the doctorate in six undergraduate colleges, eight graduate schools, and two part-time divisions. For more information, please visit www.northeastern.edu.