Morgan State University Newsroom Morgan State University
Morgan State University will host acclaimed author, physician and activist Dr. Nawal El Saadawi for a series of lectures, interviews and community discussions. Her visit is the headlining event for Morgan’s Distinguished Lecture Series, an on-going program sponsored by the University’s Office of the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. The College of Liberal Arts and the Program in Women and Gender Studies are cosponsors of Dr. El Saadawi’s visit.
Lauded in March 2011 by Newsweek as one of “150 Women Who Shake the World,” Dr. El Saadawi’s career has spanned more than 60 years of advocacy and education for a global audience. She is credited with the earliest and strongest critiques of genital mutilation of Middle Eastern women, and gender oppression within patriarchal Islamic social constructs. Dr. El Saadawi’s recent advocacy captured national headlines, as she was a key figure in the grassroots political protests in Egypt’s Tahir Square.
“Many of the themes in Dr. El Saadawi’s works (fiction and non-fiction) center on a debate about justice,” says Dr. Adele S. Newson-Horst, Dean of Morgan’s College of Liberal Arts, and a scholar of El Saadawi’s work. “In her polemics justice cannot not exist without equality—equality for the poor, women, among social classes. Having survived several repressive regimes, El Saadawi firmly situates herself as a writer for social justice. She insists that it is her job, as a writer, to expose the truth about cultural patrimony and religious fundamentalism.”
While at Morgan, Dr. El Saadawi will interact with scholars, students, the Morgan community, and the broader community. On Thursday, September 15, Dr. El Saadawi will participate in a public conversation with faculty members in the Turpin-Lamb Theatre of the Murphy Fine Arts Center beginning at 6:00 p.m. On Friday, September 16, she will deliver a master class lecture on creativity and dissidence for Morgan students in the Ruthe T. Sheffey Auditorium of the New Communications Center beginning at 10:00 a.m.
