Expertise
Race and Racial Attitudes; Theory and Methodology; Afrocentric Discourse Analysis; Women's Rights and Equity
Biography
Dr. Nilgün Anadolu-Okur is a tenured Presidential Professor of Africology and African American Studies, and an affiliated faculty for Gender and Women’s at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA. She holds an interdisciplinary degree in American Studies, African American Studies and Women’s Writing. Her research focuses on social justice, anti-racism, equity, prevention of “othering” and violence against women and children, African American and minority communities. She is the author of Dismantling Slavery, Contemporary African American Theater: Afrocentricity in the Works of Larry Neal, Amiri Baraka and Charles Fuller, Essays Interpreting the Writings of Orhan Pamuk, and Women, Islam and Globalization. Dismantling Slavery illustrates the formation of the abolitionist discourse through a collaboration of Northern freedom-seekers, led by Frederick Douglass and William L. Garrison. She has published essays and articles on Black Literature, theater, Civil Rights movement, women and mothering. She has received two international Fulbright scholarships, and other awards in historic preservation. A Commonwealth Speaker on Underground Railroad, Frederick Douglass, Lucretia Coffin Mott, Harriet Tubman, and John Brown, she is the co-founder of the “Annual Underground Railroad and Black History Conference,” at Temple University. Following the death of George Floyd, she gave media interviews and wrote articles on race and racial attitudes in the U.S. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on race, racism and gender relations. She is the director of graduate programs at Africology and African American Studies department. She is the chair of Faculty Senate Status of Women Committee.
Media Interviews
- Dispossessed: America In Pursuit of Justice and Healing During Covid-19 (on George Floyd)
- Teachers Make a Difference
- Alanında İlk ve Tek Türk Kadın Profesör (The First and Only Turkish Female Professor in Her Field)
Temple University, International - Voice of America, Associated Press
- Conference on Digitizing UGRR History
- Amerika’Da Siyah Protesto, Corona ve Sahipsizlik (Black Protest, Corona and Disposition in America)
Underground Railroad and Black History
- Frederick Douglass, Abolitionism, Ireland and the Irish
- One-of-a-kind conference in Philadelphia celebrates the real people behind the Underground Railroad
- Dismantling Slavery
- Douglass Week 2021 (on Frederick Douglass, February 8, 2021)
Selected Publications
Books
- Dismantling Slavery, Contemporary African American
Theater
- Afrocentricity in the Works of Larry Neal, Amiri Baraka and Charles Fuller
- Essays Interpreting the Writings of Orhan Pamuk, and Women, Islam and Globalization
Courses Taught
- Race and Racism
- Historical Significance of Race
- African American Social Philosophy
- Readings in Sixties Literature
- History of Black Film