The inaugural event of the Pembroke Center Publics Initiative and Lecture Series will feature Alexis Pauline Gumbs, who describes herself as a Queer Black Troublemaker and Black Feminist Love Evangelist. Gumbs is a writer whose feminist critical and creative practice includes poetry, fiction and experimental writing. In her talk, “Nutmeg and the Scale of Revolution: for Audre Lorde,” she will share research from her forthcoming book The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde, focusing on how the Grenadian Revolution and the work of Kitchen Table Women of Color Press impacted Lorde’s political approach. Gumbs will also activate an interactive poetic oracle. Come ready to participate!

Complementary Programming

Gumbs’s book Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity is a work of literary criticism based on the archive of freedom-seeking Black women, including Hortense J. Spillers. Audience members attending Gumbs’s lecture will have the chance to view the exhibition “Hortense J. Spillers: A Life Recorded” on the main floor of Pembroke Hall. The exhibition, which is part of the Pembroke Center’s 40th anniversary celebrations, features items from Spillers’s collection, which is housed in the Pembroke Center’s Feminist Theory Archive in the name of the Black Feminist Theory Project.

About the Pembroke Center Publics Initiative and Lecture Series

The Pembroke Center Publics Initiative and Lecture Series brings to Brown guests whose work in any sphere, from academics to activism and well beyond, contends with issues of gender and sexuality in a transformative manner. As a feminist research center devoted to critical scholarship on the struggles faced by people across national and transnational contexts, especially those whose gender identity or sexual orientation make them targets of violence, the Pembroke Center addresses real-world questions and commitments.

The Pembroke Center’s 40th Anniversary

The 2021–22 academic year marks the 40th anniversary of the Pembroke Center. The center was founded in 1981, a decade after Pembroke College — the coordinate women’s college of Brown University — merged fully with the men’s college. As the greater community honors 130 years of women at Brown, the Pembroke Center is delighted to celebrate its history of cultivating interdisciplinary work on gender and sexuality through its research, teaching, archival and community-building programs.