BCC Events
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Black History Month Soul Food Luncheon
Date: February 4
Time: 12:00 pm
Location: Black Cultural Center Auditorium
Audience: Open to allJoin the Black Cultural Center as we kick off Black History Month with a Soul Food Luncheon! Come build community and learn about the legacy and importance of this month in our culture. Meals will be provided on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Other Campus Events
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Chat with Alumni: Studying Abroad while Black
Date: Wednesday, February 4, 2026Time: 3 pmLocation: Rothschild Great RoomAudience: Students, Faculty, StaffIf you are thinking about studying abroad and wondering how identity factors in, come stop by Rothschild Great Room on Feb 4th at 3-4pm to chat with Black study abroad alumni as they share their experiences.
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Black Life Matter: Blackness, Religion, and the Subject Book Talk Event
Date: Wednesday, February 4, 2026
Time: 5pm
Location: Vanderbilt Divinity School: G-29/The Space
Audience: Students, Faculty, StaffJoin the Vanderbilt Divinity School for a book talk and conversation with Dr. Biko Mandela Gray, associate professor in the Department of African American Studies and author of Black Life Matter: Blackness, Religion, and the Subject. This book talk will include a conversation and wider q+a led by Ristina Gooden, PhD student in Homiletics and Liturgics, and Royal Todd, PhD student in Religion, Ethics, & Society with a light reception following. In Black Life Matter, Biko Mandela Gray offers a philosophical eulogy for Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, and Sandra Bland that attests to their irreducible significance in the face of unremitting police brutality. Gray employs a theoretical method he calls “sitting-with”—a philosophical practice of care that seeks to defend the dead and the living. He shows that the police who killed Stanley-Jones and Rice reduced them to their bodies in ways that turn black lives into tools that the state uses to justify its violence and existence. He outlines how Bland’s arrest and death reveal the affective resonances of blackness, and he contends that Sterling’s physical movement and speech before he was killed point to black flesh as unruly living matter that exceeds the constraints of the black body. These four black lives, Gray demonstrates, were more than the brutal violence enacted against them; they speak to a mode of life that cannot be fully captured by the brutal logics of antiblackness. This event is a collaboration by the Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality and the Kelly Miller Smith Institute on Black Church Studies.
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Nilaja Amari Showcase: New School v. Old School
Date: Saturday, February 7, 2026Time: 7 pmLocation: Sarratt CinemaAudience: Students, Faculty, StaffThe Nilaja Amari Showcase: Old School v. New School is a celebration of African dance & music across generations. This showcase brings together Afrobeats classics and modern interpretations, highlighting how African music continues to evolve while staying rooted in culture. Join us on February 7th, 2026 for a night of dance, fun, and friendly competition as we honor our foundation and push the culture forward.
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Rev. James M. Lawson, Jr. Memoir Launch Celebration
Date: Tuesday, February 18, 2026Time: 6 pmLocation: The Historic Woolworth Theatre, 223 Rep. John Lewis Way N, Nashville, TN 37219Audience: Students, Faculty, StaffVanderbilt University, in collaboration with the James Lawson Institute for Research and Study of Nonviolent Movements, Dialogue Vanderbilt, and co-author Emily Yellin celebrate the launch of a new book honoring the life and legacy of Rev. Reverend James M. Lawson Jr., one of the most influential architects of the modern civil rights movement and a global teacher of nonviolence. This celebratory book launch will feature musical performances, dialogue with Rev. Lawson’s son, John Lawson, and the co-author, Emily Yellin. The program will highlight how Lawson’s legacy continues to inform contemporary conversations around justice, nonviolence, and collective action in times of social and political uncertainty. The event will take place at the Woolworth Theatre in downtown Nashville, a landmark of the Civil Rights Movement. The Woolworth Theatre is a historic site of the 1960 Nashville lunch counter sit-ins. This powerful site of student-led nonviolent resistance is a very fitting setting to celebrate and honor Reverend Lawson’s lifelong commitment to nonviolent social change and his enduring impact at Vanderbilt University and beyond.