A campus lecture Monday, Oct. 16, will discuss the history and significance of Mary Ann Shadd Cary, whose bicentenary is being celebrated this week.

In her presentation “Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Race, Gender, and Abolition in the 19th Century,” Jane Rhodes, professor of Black Studies and associate dean for faculty research in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois Chicago, will draw on her book Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century, considered the definitive biography of the pioneering publisher.

Indiana University Press is publishing a new edition this fall.

“Shadd Cary is of enormous significance to North American history, Black history, and women’s history, as well as to the local history of Windsor-Essex, as she published her ground-breaking newspaper, The Provincial Freeman, in what is now Windsor,” says history professor Miriam Wright.

The event is free and open to the public. It will begin at 1 p.m. in the Oak Room, Vanier Hall, and is hosted by the Department of History, the Department of Interdisciplinary and Critical Studies, and the Black Studies Institute.