The 2026 annual Powell-Edwards public lecture features a conversation between Marina Magloire, Ph.D., of Emory University and E. Gaynell Sherrod, Ph.D., of VCUarts. 

Magloire, a literary scholar, and Sherrod, a choreographer, dancer and dance scholar, have each published books on the pioneering anthropologists and artists Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) and Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960). Their books explore how these women, among others, mediated the global influence of Afro-diasporic spiritual traditions including Haitian Vodou. 

The conversation will address how artistic, spiritual and scholarly practices influence one another in the work of the scholar-artists they have studied, and in their own work.