FROM STAFF REPORTS

MONTEVALLO – The University of Montevallo will celebrate the 72nd year of its Dancy Foundation Lectures Series with “New Orleans: Celebrating the Soul of the City” Nov. 8 at 6:45 p.m., in the Merchants and Planters Auditorium in Comer Hall on the University campus.

Author and poet Brenda Marie Osbey, a native of New Orleans and a visiting professor at Brown University, will be the guest lecturer. The recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, Osbey served as the first peer-selected poet laureate of Louisiana from 2005-2007 and is a widely recognized and frequently published author of poetry and of prose nonfiction in English and French.

For almost 20 years, Osbey has conducted research and recorded the history of the Faubourg Tremé, a community founded by free blacks in New Orleans. She served as a consultant and commentator on New Orleans Black culture and history for “Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans” (Serendipity Films, 2007).

The tradition of the Dancy Foundation Lectures Series at Montevallo began in 1939 with bequests from Unity D. Dancy to several universities in the South, including (then) Alabama College, “to endow the Departments of English, Literature and Expression.” The income from the endowment provides for a series of lectures every second year to be delivered by a “nationally recognized authority qualified to present original research or fresh criticism related to the development of culture in the South.”

This year, in addition to Osbey’s lecture and poetry, the University of Montevallo Jazz Ensemble will provide music, and New Orleans-style food will be served.

The Dancy Lecture is free and open to the public.