Power, Possibility, and the Black Imaginary: Previewing this Year's Black Heritage Month Keynote with Dr. Daphne Lamothe

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On Thursday, February 27, 2025, at 4 p.m., Commonwealth Honors College will host its Annual Black Heritage Month Celebration, bringing students, faculty, and community members together for a keynote that promises to challenge expectations. This year’s speaker is Dr. Daphne Lamothe, who is the provost at Smith College as well as a professor of Africana Studies there. She is an expert in African American, Afro-Caribbean, and Black literature around the globe. Lamothe’s work explores how Black communities make sense of their place in the world — how migration, memory, and cultural shifts shape identity. Through literature, history, and art, she examines how Black people have created meaning, forged belonging, and reimagined themselves in response to changing times. 

When I spoke with Lamothe, she had a message for those who think they know what to expect from a Black History Month lecture — expect the unexpected. 

“I think that when people see Black Heritage Keynote, they think they'll know what to expect. And I think that if you experience certain ideas through the lens of artistic imagination, creative imagination, then there's always the unexpected and the surprising,” she said.

Her talk, Power, Potency, Possibility, and the Black Imaginary, will open a conversation about how creativity expands our understanding of Black history, making space for new ways to see, interpret, and engage with it.

“Some of the most brilliant, beautiful, and moving ideals, stories, and feelings I have experienced come from Black history, culture, and literature,” Lamothe shared. “If you really open yourself up to the world, to the Black imaginary, you’ll find yourself seeing the world differently,” she added. 

Creativity’s Role in Black Culture

In our conversation, Lamothe reflected on how Black communities have used literature and storytelling to navigate displacement and claim belonging, but she is just as invested in what happens when people truly engage with these works. In the classroom, she has watched students approach a text thinking they already know what it’s about, only to find themselves seeing history, identity, or even their own perspectives in an entirely new light. Lamothe hopes this keynote will create that same sense of discovery and a space to rethink, reconsider, and walk away seeing things differently.

That shift in perspective is at the heart of what she hopes attendees will take from this event. The Black Imaginary, as Lamothe describes it, is about what stories make possible. It is a framework for thinking, for challenging assumptions, for imagining new futures. This is what makes Black artistic and intellectual traditions so powerful — they push beyond what is known into what could be, and hold space for transformation. 

“I want us to think about where we are in this moment,” she said. “What are we looking to for strength? What are the messages that keep us moving forward?”

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The past is part of that answer, but so is the present. Lamothe spoke about what it means to engage with art in difficult times, describing how her work on her 2024 book, Black Time and the Aesthetic Possibility of Objects, took shape during moments of social and political upheaval in 2020. 

“In the book, I focused a lot on how being in an encounter with the work of art pulled us out of ourselves and encourages us to see things from different perspectives and different angles and to look at your reaction. It might be emotional. It might be intellectual. It makes you feel different things. So, there's something about being present with the work of art that I was really interested in,” she explained.

In the classroom, she has seen firsthand how students encounter literature, music, and visual art in ways that shift their thinking, revealing something they hadn’t noticed before. That sense of discovery, of being surprised by what a piece of art or a historical narrative can reveal, is central to the conversation she hopes to open with this keynote.

When I spoke with Lamothe, she described education as a privilege — not just because of the knowledge gained, but because it offers something rare: time and space to sit with ideas that might change you. She sees universities as some of the only places where people can pause long enough to ask big questions, challenge their own assumptions, and explore ideas beyond immediate demands. 

As February 27 approaches, students have an opportunity to engage with big questions and step into a space where history, art, and possibility come together. Whether you have studied these ideas before or are encountering them for the first time, this keynote offers a chance to engage, to listen, and perhaps to leave seeing things in a new way.

The Annual Black Heritage Month Celebration: Power, Potency, Possibility, and the Black Imaginary will take place on Thursday, February 27, at 4 p.m. in the CHC Events Hall. It is open to all members of the UMass Amherst community.