Sheri Parks, Ph.D., associate professor and co-director of graduate studies in the department of American studies at the University of Maryland, College Park and author of
Fierce Angels: The Strong Black Woman in American Life and Culture, will deliver the 19
th annual Martin Luther King, Jr., Convocation Address at Loyola University Maryland on Thursday, January 19, 2012. The event begins at 7 p.m. in McGuire Hall on the University’s North Charles Street campus.
A longtime NPR radio personality, Parks is known to Maryland audiences as the award-winning co-host of Media Matters, host of Clear Reception with Sheri Parks, and now, as cultural critic on Midday with Dan Rodricks on WYPR in Baltimore. She has been interviewed by regional, national, and international media including the New York Times, Hardball with Chris Matthews, CNN, NBC News, NPR’s Tell Me More, and the Los Angeles Times. Her own writing has also appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, and Urbanite.
At the University of Maryland, Parks teaches courses that focus on marginality, gender roles, and family in popular culture and media. Her research focuses on public aesthetics, with particular concern for popular culture as public mythology and its effect on individuals, families, and minority cultures. In 2008 she was recognized by the campus as the Outstanding Woman of Color and as Faculty of the Year in the University Honors Program.
Parks earned a B.A. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a master’s and Ph.D. in communication studies from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She lives outside Baltimore with her husband, Lovell Smith, and their daughter, Kelsey, a student at the Park School and an elite equestrian.
Since 1993, Loyola has sponsored an annual convocation in honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., to provide a forum for all members of the greater Baltimore community to come together to explore the issues of social justice, politics, racial identity, and spirituality. Previous Martin Luther King, Jr., Convocation speakers include filmmaker Spike Lee, University of Pennsylvania professor Michael Eric Dyson, singer Bernice Johnson Reagon, and author Nell Irvin Painter.
The event is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. For more information or to reserve your seat, visit www.loyola.edu/mlkconvocation/12/ or call 410-617-5757.
For more information or questions regarding this story, contact Media Relations Manager Nick Alexopulos at nalexopulos@loyola.edu or 410-617-5025.