Race, Place and Civic Genealogies

Lois Brown is ASU Foundation Professor of English and director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at Arizona State University. She is a public historian and a scholar of African American literature and culture known for groundbreaking research that deepens our understanding of place, race, class, gender, faith, and imagination in America.

She is the author of "Black Daughter of the Revolution: A Literary Biography of Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins," "Memoir of James Jackson, The Attentive and Obedient Scholar" and Encyclopedia of the Harlem Literary Renaissance.  Brown is a featured scholar in Henry David Thoreau, the 2026 documentary co-directed by Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers and executive produced by Ken Burns and Don Henley, was featured in the acclaimed PBS documentary The Abolitionists and was a consultant on the Emmy Award-winning Arizona PBS documentary Blacks In Arizona. 

L. Andrea Brownlee, PhD is an educator with over two decades of teaching and administrative experience in universities, community colleges and K-12 schools. Before becoming an educator, he was a civil engineer, and he worked for almost 8 years designing and building infrastructure projects and systems. Currently, a faculty member in the Maricopa County Community College District, he teaches courses in Education Studies, Applied Technology, and Cultural Studies.  He is an adjunct faculty member at Arizona State University and teaches courses in African American studies and Ethnic studies. 

Dr. Brownlee has attended and graduated from all three Arizona state schools and earned his doctorate from the University of Arizona. For his work promoting equity in education and building community, he earned the Martin Luther King Jr. Social Justice Award from Edinboro University in Pennsylvania and the Diversity Advisory Council Award from Estrella Mountain Community College. He sits on the Education Committee for the Diverse Leadership Alliance, and he is a member of the Association for Career Technical Education of Arizona where he has presented his work in supporting Black students in community college over the last four years.

Debra Bruno is a Washington, D.C.-based author and journalist who has written about law, politics, the arts, music, dance, theater, books, culture, health, and international issues from D.C. and Beijing. She has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post. Her Memoir, A Hudson Valley Reckoning: Discovering the Forgotten History of Slaveholding in my Dutch American Family explores the far-reaching impact of enslavement in the North.

Carole Coles Henry is a strong advocate and champion for human and civil rights. She has served as a public administrator, educator, social worker, human rights worker, policy maker, executive and community volunteer. She retired from the City of Phoenix in 2007 after serving 27 years in a variety of executive, middle manager, and supervisory positions. Her experiences as Interim Deputy City Manager, Equal Opportunity Director, Assistant Equal Opportunity and Lead Deputy Equal Opportunity Director, Youth Programs Administrator and Youth Center Director afforded her the opportunity to provide leadership in a variety of civil rights, equal opportunity, Affirmative Action, human relations and resources, business and economic development, diversity, equal justice, youth, disability and women’s programs. She is a dedicated family historian and has collaborated with Julie Zauzmer Weil to explore the ongoing legacy of her ancestral histories of enslavement and emancipation. 

Eleanor Mire lives in Massachusetts and has been a dedicated researcher of her family’s history in New England.  She and Debra Bruno connected about their research on enslavement in New York state and have uncovered sobering details about their shared ancestral connections.  

Duane Roen earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English teaching at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, before completing a PhD at the University of Minnesota. He began his career by teaching English at New Richmond High School in Wisconsin. Since then, he has taught and held administrative positions at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the University of Arizona, Syracuse University, and from 1995 to 2022, at Arizona State University, where he held a range of leadership roles, including president of the academic senate, dean of the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts, dean of University College, vice provost of ASU’s Polytechnic campus.  In addition to more than 300 articles, chapters, and conference presentations, Duane has published a dozen books in the field of writing studies.  He frequently conducts family history and life writing workshops (330 of them in 2025) for a wide range of organizations in Arizona. His favorite venues are Arizona State Hospital, Perryville women's prison, and Red Rock men's prison. 

Julie Z. Weil is an award-winning reporter at The Washington Post, where she covers religion, tax policy, local government, affordability and the cost of living. Her recognitions include the 2024 AARP Award for Excellence in Journalism on Aging and was a finalist, with Post colleagues, for the Dori J. Maynard Justice Award for their project on congressional enslavers, which created the nation’s first comprehensive database on slaveholders in Congress before 1840.