Fall 2026 SSFs

The UMBC Institute of Politics is proud to host Maryland State Delegate Lily Qi as our keynote speaker for Constitution Day. Del. Qi has represented District 15 in Montgomery County since January 2019. She is the first Chinese-born legislator elected to the State House and chairs the Maryland Legislative Asian-American and Pacific-Islander Caucus.

She is the author of Elected American: From Red China to Blue Maryland (Temple University Press, 2026), a political memoir and autobiography that explores her journey from Shanghai to the Maryland House of Delegates.

Delegate Lily Qi will deliver remarks on the constitutional promise of representation and the participation of immigrant communities in American democracy, followed by a moderated discussion.

Mullen Lecture

September 28, 2026 | 4pm | AOK Library Gallery

James Choi, PhD
Professor of Finance, Yale School of Management

Organized by the Department of Economics.

48th Annual W.E.B. DuBois Lecture

November 10, 2026 | 6pm | University Center Ballroom

Natanya Duncan, PhD
Director of Africana Studies and Research Institute and Associate Professor of History
Queens College City University of New York

Organized by the Department of Africana Studies. Cosponsored by the Center for Social Science Scholarship, the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Dean’s Office, and the Dresher Center for the Humanities.

Photo provided by Dr. Duncan.

Redeemed: Women of the UNIA and Du Bois’ “Damnation of Women”

In 1919, New Jersey law student Hannah Nichols called the women of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) into action.   She asked women to “present an efficient womanhood … undaunted by anyone’s objections …” in the pursuit of global Black autonomy. The phrase “efficient womanhood” would appear one year later in W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1920 essay “Damnation of Womanhood.”  Du Bois declared the history of Black women as laced with “insult and degradation” that was “both fearful and glorious.”  For Du Bois, the contradictions and dilemmas Black women faced “birthed … an efficient womanhood.”   The efficient womanhood activist strategy scripted and lived by UNIA women served to shape the Pan Africanism of the 20th Century.  This talk will examine how the women of the UNIA set the stage for Du Bois’ expanded ideas on gender and nation building in the 20th Century.

Dr. Natanya Duncan is the Director of Africana Studies and Research Institute at Queens College City University of New York and an Associate Professor of History. A historian of the African Diaspora, her research and teaching focuses on global freedom movements of the 20th and 21st Century. Duncan’s research interest includes constructions of identity and nation building amongst women of color; migrations; color and class in Diasporic communities; and the engagements of intellectuals throughout the African Diaspora. She is the author of An Efficient Womanhood: Women and the Making of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, (University of North Carolina Press 2025), which focuses on the distinct activist strategies in-acted by women in the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).

CS3 sponsored events are open for full participation by all individuals regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or any other protected category under applicable federal law, state law, and the University’s nondiscrimination policy.