Contact:
Jonathan Potts
412-268-6094

For immediate release:
September 17, 2004

Carnegie Mellon's CAUSE Speaker Series Examines The Experience of African Americans in the City

PITTSBURGH—The Center for Africanamerican Urban Studies and the Economy (CAUSE) in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University will launch its 2004-05 Speaker Series at 5 p.m. Sept. 23 with a talk by Leslie M. Harris, an associate professor of history at Emory University in Atlanta. Harris' talk is titled "In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863." The event will take place in the Singleton Room in the Roberts Hall of Engineering.

All events in the CAUSE Speaker Series are free and open to the public. Established in 1995, CAUSE aims to link the historian's interest in race, work and economic change over time with contemporary analyses of politics, the urban labor force and employment policies. It develops programs of graduate and postdoctoral training, scholarly research, data collection, publications and education.

Each talk begins at 5 p.m., and refreshments are served at 4:30. Unless specified, the locations for the talks are yet to be determined. For more information, call 412-268-8928.

The other speakers are:

October 29, Thomas A. Guglielmo: "Italian Americans' Relations with African Americans in Interwar Chicago."
Guglielmo is an assistant professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame. His talk will take place in the H&SS Auditorium in Baker Hall.

November 19, Angela Winand: "Weighed Upon a Scale: African American Women, Class and Consumer Culture in New Orleans and Washington, D.C., 1880-1950."
Winand is a CAUSE postdoctoral fellow. Her talk will take place in the H&SS Auditorium in Baker Hall.

February 18, William B. Gould IV: "Diary of a Contraband: The Civil War Passage of a Black Sailor."
Gould is the Charles A. Beardsley Professor of Law, emeritus, at Stanford Law School and former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board.

March 18, Martin Anthony Summers: "Remaking Men: Patriotism, Citizenship and Black Middle-Class Masculinity During World War I."
Summers is an associate professor of history at the University of Oregon.

April 8, Vijay Prashad: "Anti-Racism and Afro-Asian Interactions—The Pitfalls of Multiculturalism."
Prashad is an associate professor of the International Studies Department at Trinity College in Connecticut.