PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — In two events scheduled just four days apart in February, members of the Brown community and the greater Providence area will have the opportunity to hear from Angela Davis and Roxane Gay, two educators whose scholarship, writing, activism and commentary continue to shape public discourse on feminism, race, identity and culture.

On Friday, Feb. 10, at 7 p.m., Davis will deliver a presentation titled “Freedom is a Constant Struggle” in the Salomon Center for Teaching’s DeCiccio Family Auditorium on the College Green at Brown. The event is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. A book signing will follow. For those who can't attend in person, the event will be live-streamed on the Brown website.

Davis is a distinguished professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she taught in the history of consciousness and feminist studies departments. The author of nine books including “Women, Race and Class” and “Are Prisons Obsolete?”, Davis has been a longtime advocate for gender equity, prisoners’ rights, prison reform and alliances across color lines.

Renowned for her work as an activist/organizer and scholar, Davis came to national attention after being removed from her teaching position in the philosophy department at the University of California, Los Angeles, as a result of her social activism and political affiliation. She landed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list in 1970 and was acquitted of charges in 1972.

At the recent Women’s March on Washington on Jan. 21, Davis delivered a speech that touched on many of the issues she has worked on for decades. “Over the next months and years we will be called upon to intensify our demands for social justice to become more militant in our defense of vulnerable populations,” she said.

The visit comes as part of the Brown Center for Students of Color’s Black, Asian American, Latinx, Multiracial, Native American, and Southwest Asian/North African Heritage Series.

On Tuesday, Feb. 14, four days after Davis’s visit to Brown, Roxane Gay will visit the university. Maggie Unverzagt Goddard and Ida Yalzadeh, graduate students in Brown’s American studies department who organized Gay’s visit, described her as yet untitled lecture as one that “will create a space for critical engagement with popular culture and attention to the role of academics in public discourse.”

With research interests including the intersections between race, gender and popular culture, contemporary fiction and the political novel, Gay has published five award-winning books including the essay collection “Bad Feminist,” which explores contemporary feminism, and “Difficult Women,” a volume of short stories. She is a contributing op-ed writer for the New York Times and recently became the first black woman to write for Marvel with the comic series called “World of Wakanda.” Forthcoming in 2017 is a memoir, “Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body.”

Goddard and Yalzadeh described Gay’s work as discussing “issues of diversity and inclusion through her own perspective as a woman of color, academic and avid pop culture follower.”

Gay’s lecture takes place on at 7 p.m., also in Salomon’s DeCiccio Family Auditorium, followed by a book signing. The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.