Ayesha Hardison, Kansas University’s current Langston Hughes Visiting Professor, will speak about race and gender politics today at the Kansas Union.

Hardison, an associate professor of English at Ohio University, will give her presentation, titled “Of Maids and Ladies: The Ethics of Living Jane Crow” at 3:30 p.m. in the Kansas Room of the union.

Her first book, “Writing through Jane Crow: Race and Gender Politics in African American Literature,” studies the representation of African-American women during World War II and the years leading up to the modern civil rights movement, as well as politics of black literary production in that era.

Today’s lecture is free and open to the public, and a reception will follow in the Malott Room.

More information on Hardison and the Langston Hughes Visiting Professorship can be found online.