Adelphi University is pleased to announce that the Chair of the English Department Kermit Frazier will deliver a lecture, “A Take on Black Masculinity in the Plays of August Wilson,” on Wednesday, March 3, at 7:00 p.m. in the Ruth S. Harley University Center in the Thomas Dixon Lovely Ballroom, 1 South Avenue, Garden City. The lecture is sponsored by the James Baldwin Lecture on Literary and Social Criticism and it is free and open to the public.

August Wilson is one of the premier contemporary American playwrights and the author of many plays, including The Pittsburgh Cycle, also known as The August Wilson Century Cycle. The volume includes ten plays, each taking place in one of the decades beginning with the 1900s and ending with the 1990s. Professor Frazier will discuss various plays by Mr. Wilson, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner whose plays focus particularly on the journeys of black men towards self-definition, including Fences, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

In addition to his current role as professor of English at Adelphi, Professor Frazier has been a playwright and television writer, as well as a creative nonfiction and short fiction writer for more than 25 years. He has had eighteen plays produced in New York and around the country. As a television writer, he helped create and was a head writer for the children’s mystery series Ghostwriter, was co-producer and executive story editor of Gullah Gullah Island, and has also written for The Wonder Pets, The Cosby Mysteries, and All My Children. Professor Frazier’s articles, reviews and short stories have appeared in publications including The Chicago Review and The New York Times Book Review. Additionally, he has served on several art panels.

For more information about Adelphi University, please visit www.adelphi.edu. To learn more about the English Department, please visit http://academics.adelphi.edu/artsci/eng/ .