Social Sciences Forum — Natanya Duncan: Redeemed: Women of the UNIA and Du Bois’ “Damnation of Women”

Social Sciences Forum lecture with Natanya Duncan Redeemed: Women of the UNIA and Du Bois’ “Damnation of Women” This 48th Annual W.E.B. Du Bois Lecture is part of the Fall 2026 Social Sciences Forum 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. 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). Admission is free. This event is organized by the Department of Africana Studies and is co-sponsored 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 .