Lorraine Hansberry: Between Art and Politics

A conversation between Soyica Diggs Colbert and SWI member Brian Phillips, on the life and vision of Lorraine Hansberry.

Missed the talk? Watch the recording here:

Meet the Speaker

Soyica Diggs Colbert is the Interim Dean of Georgetown College at Georgetown University, where she is also the Idol Family Professor of African American Studies and Performing Arts.

She has had fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support a residency at the Schomburg Center, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Stanford University, Mellon Foundation, and the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory University. 

She is also an Associate Director at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. Colbert is the author of Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry; Black Movements: Performance and Cultural Politics; and The African American Theatrical Body. Colbert co-edited Race and Performance After Repetition and The Psychic Hold of Slavery. Most recently, she served as a Creative Content Producer for The Public Theatre’s audio play, shadow/land. Her research interests span the 19th-21st centuries, from Harriet Tubman to Beyoncé, and from poetics to performance.

Soyica Diggs Colbert

“Daddy felt that this country was hopeless in its treatment of Negroes. So he became a refugee from America. I’m afraid I have to agree with Daddy’s assessment of this country. But I don’t agree with the leaving part. I don’t feel defensive. Daddy really belonged to a different age, a different period. He didn’t feel free. One of the reasons I feel so free is that I feel I belong to a world majority, and a very assertive one.” — Lorraine Hansberry