By JAMES SAVAGE
UL Lafayette
Award-winning historian Dr. LaKisha Simmons will discuss “Black Women’s Memories: Monuments, History and the Louisiana Sugar Cane Plantations of Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’” during a lecture at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
The third annual Guilbeau Lecture will be held at 6 p.m. on Thursday, March 14, in H.L. Griffin Hall, room 147. It is free and open to the public.
Simmons is an assistant professor of history and women’s studies at the University of Michigan. Her book, “Crescent City Girls: The Lives of Young Black Women in Segregated New Orleans,” won the 2016 Julia Cherry Spruill Prize from the Southern Association for Women Historians for the Best Book in Southern Women’s History.
Simmons’ lecture on Thursday explores themes of violence and enslavement found in Beyoncé’s “Lemonade,” the singer’s 2016 Grammy Award-winning visual album. Scenes for the album were filmed at Destrehan Plantation, near New Orleans.
UL Lafayette’s Department of History, Geography and Philosophy hosts the Guilbeau Lecture Series, which is funded by the Guilbeau Charitable Trust.
The trust honors the memories of history graduate student Jamie Guilbeau and his mother, Thelma Guilbeau. The Guilbeaus created the trust through an endowment managed by the UL Lafayette Foundation.
Parking for the lecture is available in the Girard Park Circle garage, 138 Girard Park Circle.
In addition to being the Guilbeau Lecture, Simmons’ presentation also will serve as the keynote address for a conference that examines how Louisiana’s artists, museum professionals and public historians incorporate – or avoid – discussions of slavery in their work.
The conference, “Representing Enslavement: Louisiana’s Past in the Present,” will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Friday, March 15, at the Clifton Chenier Center, 220 W. Willow St. in Lafayette. It is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Find details here: https://cls.louisiana.edu/news-events/events/20190212/representing-enslavement-louisiana’s-past-present-keynote-lecture.
