A panel on representation of women in art and popular culture. In conversation will be:

Kwakiutl L. Dreher, Associate Professor of English, is a screenwriter, actor, playwright, and author. She is the author of Dancing on the White Page: Black Women Entertainers Writing Autobiography (SUNY Press) and her essays and articles have appeared in Film Criticism, the Popular Culture Review, and A Feminist Encyclopedia of African American Literature. Her recent film, Anna, for which she was screenwriter, co-director, co-producer, and actor, has received recognition and rewards from film festivals across the country, including Best Animation from the 2018 New Media Film Festival.

Brigitte McQueen Shew is the founder and executive director of The Union of Contemporary Art, in North Omaha. Originally from Detroit, Brigitte earned her degree in Journalism from St. John’s University in New York City. She has worked in advertising, as a pastry chef and spent 10 years with Teen People magazine. The mission of the Union: “The organization was founded on the belief that the arts can be a vehicle for social justice and greater civic engagement; we strive to utilize the arts as a bridge to connect our diverse community in innovative and meaningful ways.”

Hope Wabuke, Assistant Professor of English, is a poet, essayist, and literary scholar. Her research and creative work explore the literature of the global African diaspora as well as larger questions of immigration, the first-generation experience, the refugee experience, liminality, trauma, inherited trauma, gender, women’s studies, modernism and post-modernism. She is the author of the poetry collections Movement No. 1: Trains (dancing girl press) and The Leaving (Akashic Press). She was a finalist for the 2015 Brunel University African Poetry Prize. She is a founding board member of the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction.

Moderated by: Adrienne Christian, a PhD student in English and Art. She is a fine-art photographer and author of two poetry collections: 12023 Woodmont Avenue (Willow Lit, 2013), and A Proper Lover (Main Street Rag, 2017). Adrienne’s nonfiction and poetry have been featured in over five dozen magazines and literary journals, including The Los Angeles Review as The Editor’s Choice, Today’s Black Woman, Jolie, Obsidian, and Alimentum. She is a fellow of Cave Canem and Callaloo writing residencies. Adrienne is also an Associate Editor at Backbone Press, and an Editorial Assistant in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction at Prairie Schooner literary magazine.