Speakers
- Robert Rooks
- Clark Atlanta University
Robert Earl Rooks Jr. is a native of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and has taught English at Fisk University. Upon finishing undergraduate studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, he traveled to The Gambia and Senegal to study the impact of colonization on the African aesthetic, and later attended Tennessee State University, earning a Master of Arts in English. Robert’s interests lie in having discourse on gray spaces. He believes that “It is the role of the public intellectual to indulge in the big idea. The gray spaces are places that require courage to indulge in, and makes us all better people having considered them”. Robert recently collaborated with Nashville artist Thaxton Waters in the art exhibition Building Better Tables through a series of workshops titled Sitting at the Welcome Table, 2018., and was accepted into Clark Atlanta University’s Humanities Doctoral Program.