Harvard University announced last week that it will award the 2019 W. E. B. Du Bois Medals to seven recipients, including Pulitzer Prize Board member Elizabeth Alexander and 1987 Poetry winner Rita Dove.
The award, which was established in 2000 and is currently administered by the University's Hutchins Center for African & African-American Research, has been designated as Harvard's highest honor in the field of African and African-American studies.
According to the Center, the Medal is "awarded to individuals in the United States and across the globe in recognition of their contributions to African and African-American culture and the life of the mind." Past recipients have included actress Pam Grier, former White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett and comedian Dave Chappelle.
Alexander, who was appointed president of the Mellon Foundation in 2018, most recently served as Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. A doctoral graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, she has published six volumes of poetry (including the Pulitzer-nominated "American Sublime"); a collection of essays; an edited collection by 1950 Poetry winner Gwendolyn Brooks; and a memoir, "The Light of the World," which was a finalist in the Biography category in 2016. She joined the Pulitzer Board later that year.
Dove, who received her M.F.A. from the University of Iowa, is the Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia. She was U.S. Poet Laureate from 1993 to 1995 and Special Consultant in Poetry for the Library of Congress Bicentennial in 1999-2000. From 2004 to 2006, she served as the Poet Laureate of Virginia. In September, she received the 2019 Wallace Stevens Award (named after the 1955 Poetry winner) for lifetime achievement from the Academy of American Poets.
Other recipients this year include actress/musician Queen Latifah, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Lonnie G. Bunch III, BET co-founder Sheila C. Johnson, artist Kerry James Marshall and philanthropist Robert F. Smith.
Free tickets for the ceremony, which will be held at Harvard's Sanders Theater on October 22 at 4 p.m., will be available on October 15 at noon via the Harvard Box Office.