Opening Celebration - Christopher Myers: Please Trouble, Carry Me

As part of the Gantt Golden Year, join us to celebrate the opening of Christopher Myers: Please Trouble, Carry Me. This exhibition imaginatively expresses a culmination of mythological, spiritual, and historical references through a variety of mediums, including stained glass paintings, adorned textiles, and archival objects. Please Trouble, Carry Me features the site-specific installation, Let the Mermaids Flirt with Me, which explores the distinct, long-standing relationship between those belonging to the African diaspora and water.

The reception will include an artist talk between the artist, Christopher Myers, and Davidson College's Senior Professor of English, Dr. Brenda Flanagan. Enjoy light refreshments and engage with this immersive artistic experience.

About The Exhibition

Click/tap here to read more about this exhibition.

Dr. Brenda Flanagan is the Edward Armfield Professor of English and Core Faculty, Africana Studies at Davidson College, Davidson, NC. Dr. Flanagan earned her Ph.D. at The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. At Michigan, she won three Major Hopwood Writing Awards in Fiction – novel, short story, and drama. She has been a professor in the English Department since 1994 and was instrumental in developing their Africana Studies department.

Dr. Flanagan also taught at Tuskegee Institute, Wayne State University, and Eastern Michigan University, and the Anglo-American University in Prague, Czech Republic. Since 2003, she has served in 16 countries as a Cultural Ambassador, lecturing on African American Literature and History for the US. State Department, and reading from her own fiction. Her most recent programs were in Ireland in June 2023, and Romania in February-March 2023. In the summer of 2023, she served as a Fulbright Specialist in South Africa – her first award as a Fulbright Specialist was in June 2019 in Kazakhstan. She has won several National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships and in 2019 Davidson College’s students and alumni awarded her the prestigious Hunter Hamilton Love of Teaching Award.

Books written:

• Women's Artistic Dissent: Repelling Totalitarianism in Pre-1989 Czechoslovakia (Lexington Books, December 2023), co-authored with Hana Waisserova, this nonfiction book explores writings by Czech women as acts of defiance.
• You Alone Are Dancing (The University of Michigan Press, 1996)
• Allah in the Islands (Peepal Tree Press, Leeds, England, 2009)
• In Praise of Island Women & Other Crimes (Peepal Tree Press, 2010)

Dr. Flanagan is currently writing a book about the year in which she worked with Nina Simone. Learn more about Dr. Flanagan at drbrendaflanagan.net.