Call for Proposals: Zora Neale Hurston Speaker Series

Call for Proposals: Zora Neale Hurston Speaker Series 

Are you planning an event featuring a scholar, artist, or community leader from an underrepresented community? Does your event need funding and administrative support? 

If so, please consider writing a proposal for your event to be a part of the Zora Neale Hurston Speaker Series. 

Proposals for events taking place in the spring semester of 2023 should be submitted to John Ribó at jribo@fsu.edu by October 15, 2022.  

Proposals should include: 

• the name of an FSU faculty or staff member who will serve as lead organizer
• a description of the speaker(s) and format of the event
• an estimated total budget
• a list of possible co-sponsors
• an outline of administrative needs

Further information about the series and past speakers:

The FSU Zora Neale Hurston Speaker Series features scholars, artists, and leaders whose work points the way to a better future for all. The series takes inspiration from the life and work of Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960). Hurston’s groundbreaking anthropological research, filmmaking, audio recordings, and creative writing documented and imagined new possibilities for Black life throughout Florida, the United States, and the Caribbean. Yet her contributions only received the full recognition they merit after her death. In honoring Hurston’s legacy, this speaker series supports and promotes the work of talented people from marginalized communities so that the FSU community can learn from and engage in their work today. 

Previous events funded in part by the speaker series include a screening and conversation with Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker RaMell Ross, a performance, lecture, and conversation with the Annenberg University Professor of Performance Studies and African American Studies at Northwestern University, E. Patrick Johnson, and the 9th National Symposium on Spanish as a Heritage Language.