Jarvis R. Givens at The Brattle Theater

Harvard Book Store welcomes Jarvis R. Givens—Professor of Education and African and African American Studies and the co-founding faculty director of the Black Teacher Archive at Harvard University—for a discussion of his latest book, I'll Make Me A World: The 100-Year Journey of Black History Month. He will be joined in conversation by Imani Perry—National Book Award–winning author of South to America and the Henry A. Morss Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University.

There are two ticket options for this event.

1. Book-Included Tickets: Includes admission for one and one hardcover copy of I'll Make Me a World pre-signed by Jarvis R. Givens.
2. Admission-Only Tickets: Includes admission for one.

Note: Books bundled with tickets may only be picked up at the venue the night of the event, and cannot be picked up in-store beforehand. Ticket holders who purchased a book-included ticket and are unable to attend the event will be able to pick up their book at Harvard Book Store up to 30 days following the event. This offer expires after 30 days. Please note we cannot guarantee signed copies will be available to ticket holders who do not attend the event.

On its one-hundredth anniversary, a powerful and essential meditation on the origins, evolution, and future of Black History Month from one of America’s leading historians of Black education and the author of American Grammar.

In I’ll Make Me a World, acclaimed Harvard scholar Jarvis R. Givens takes us on a personal and political journey through the 100-year history of Black History Month—from its radical beginnings in 1926 as “Negro History Week” to its role today as a celebration and flashpoint in America’s cultural battles. Drawing on archival research, personal stories involving family and students, and especially the wisdom of Black educators, Givens recovers the legacy of Carter G. Woodson and many others who envisioned Black history as a liberatory force—knowledge that shapes who we are, how we resist, and what we dream.

With striking clarity, Givens challenges today’s myopic commemorations of iconic figures and urges us to expand our understanding of Black history to include the everyday lives of ordinary people—the “workadays” whose stories have long gone untold but form critical parts of Black history. Indeed, people who played important roles in passing on Black memories that helped disrupt oppressively narrow perspectives on human life. Givens also attends to the labor involved in preserving Black history, especially in intellectual environments where it is constantly denigrated and undervalued, and he insists that more transparency about such processes is necessary to ensure this worthy tradition is passed on to future generations.

I’ll Make Me A World is a call to remember, reimagine, and reclaim an intellectual tradition built by communities well before our time, and to take seriously what is politically at stake in its preservation. At a time when Black history is under attack, this book offers an inspiring vision for how it can still be a source of power, truth, and possibility.

Jarvis R. Givens is a Professor of Education and African and African American Studies and the co-founding faculty director of the Black Teacher Archive at Harvard University. He is also the current Leverhulme Visiting Professor at University College London’s Institute of the Americas. Givens is the author of three books, Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching; School Clothes: A Collective Memoir of Black Student Witness; and American Grammar: Race, Education, and the Building of a Nation. Givens is originally from Compton, California, and lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Imani Perry is the National Book Award–winning author of South to America, as well as seven other books of nonfiction. She is the Henry A. Morss Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, and is a 2023 MacArthur Fellow.

Masks are encouraged but not required for this event.

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