Talking Black in America: Performance Traditions by Distinguished Scholar Walt Wolfram, PhD

A film screening of Professor Walt Wolfram's recent documentary which summarizes the vast array of African American Language use in performance styles and genres that include musical traditions, spoken genres and rituals.  Interviews with performers and other experts illustrate ways in which the Black Experience and the use of African American Language are essential to these creative forms of expressions. Followed by Q & A. 

Walt Wolfram is William C. Friday Distinguished University Professor at North Carolina

State University, where he also directs the Language and Life Project. He has pioneered

research on social and ethnic dialects since the 1960s and published 23 books and more

than 300 articles. Over the last two decades, he and his students have conducted more

than 3,500 sociolinguistic interviews with residents of North Carolina and beyond. In

addition to his research interests, Professor Wolfram is particularly interested in the

application of sociolinguistic information to the public, including the production of

television documentaries, the construction of museum exhibits, and the development of

innovative formal and informal materials related to language diversity for different

institutions. He has received numerous awards, including the North Carolina Award (the

highest award given to a citizen of North Carolina), Caldwell Humanities Laureate from

the NC Humanities Council, the Holladay Medal at NC State, the Board of Governor’s

Holshouser Award for Excellence in Public Service, and the Linguistics, Language and

the Public Award from the Linguistic Society of America. He has been inducted into the

American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and served as President of the Linguistic Society

of America, the American Dialect Society, and the Southeastern Conference on

Linguistics.