Five endowed chairs and professorships have been added to the the North Carolina Central University (NCCU) College of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CASH) to strengthen the academic experience of its students.
The college’s newest endowed scholars include Zelda Lockhart, Ph.D., Distinguished Endowed Associate Professor of Creative Writing and African American Literature in the department of language and literature; Lydia Lindsey, Ph.D., Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor in Liberal Arts within the department of history; Jonathan Livingston, Ph.D., Benjamin S. Ruffin Distinguished Professor of Civic Education and Social Justice Professor in the department of psychology; Gladys Mitchell-Walthour, Ph.D., Dan T. Blue Endowed Chair in the department of political science; and Charles Williams, SunTrust Endowed Professor in the department of art and design.
“The innovative research of these scholars will enhance the teaching, learning and discovery of new knowledge across the college,” said Carlton Wilson, Ph.D., CASH interim dean. “I am especially excited about the impact their scholarship and professional activities will have on junior faculty, and how their work will fulfill North Carolina Central University’s Eagle Promise to students as they work toward graduating on time with local and global engagement opportunities that offer leadership development and career readiness.”
Lockhart facilitates research on the capacity for story and nature to help individuals self-define, heal and liberate. A published author, she has written numerous novels, including “Fifth Born,” a Barnes & Noble discovery selection and Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright Award finalist; “Cold Running Creek,” a Black Caucus of the American Library Association Honor Fiction awardee; and “Fifth Born II: The Hundredth Turtle,” a 2011 Lambda Literary Award finalist. Lockhart’s forthcoming novel, “Trinity,” will be published in 2023, and her fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in Chautauqua, Obsidian II and USA Today. She holds a doctorate in expressive art therapies, master’s degree in literature and certificate in writing, directing and editing from the New York Film Academy.
Based in NCCU’s Department of History and the Women and Gender Studies Program, Lindsey conducts research regarding the everyday lives of Black women workers in Birmingham, England, after World War II. Drawing together official government records and oral history to consider how local conditions affected national policy decisions about workers of color, her work is a welcome expansion in the field of British history. Lindsey has published several works that have reshaped the British historiography of West Indians in Britain in the 20th century. She holds bachelor and master’s degrees in European history from Howard University and a Ph.D. in British Empire and Commonwealth History and Modern European History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Lindsey has also held residencies at the Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations; The University of Warwick in Coventry, England; and the Institute for Historical Research at the University of London.
Livingston’s current research focuses on social and psychological factors associated with positive health and mental health outcomes for African Americans. Committed to serving his community, Livingston is co-principal investigator on the Duke-NCCU partnership investigating the use of ethnodramas to address health disparities among low income communities of color. While at NCCU, he has assisted in securing over $20.3 million in grant funding from federal and state agencies. Livingston previously held positions as director of outreach for the Export Grant, a project of the Julius Chambers Biomedical Bio-technical Research Institute, which evaluated the effectiveness of efforts to reduce health disparities and educate the African American community about alcohol, substance abuse, cancer and cardiovascular disease risk factors; co-director of the NCCU Institute for Children Youth and Family; and senior research fellow at Johnson C. Smith University’s Smith Institute for Applied Research. An author of several publications about race, psychology, mental health and health disparities, Livingston has presented his research at several national and international conferences and mentored over 30 students at the top Ph.D. programs around the U.S. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Asheville; master’s degree from Florida A&M State University and Ph.D. from Michigan State University.
Mitchell-Walthour is a political scientist specializing in Afro-Brazilian political behavior and racial politics. Her current work focuses on Black American and Black Brazilian social welfare women beneficiaries and their political opinions. Mitchell-Walthour has served as the Brazil Studies Association president and is currently the national co-coordinator for the U.S. Network for Democracy. She is author of “The Politics of Blackness: Racial Identity and Political Behavior in Contemporary Brazil” and has co-edited and published several books and peer-reviewed articles focusing on race and politics in Brazil. Mitchell-Walthour holds a bachelor’s degree from Duke University, a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She was a Lemann Visiting Fellow at Harvard University and has held postdoctoral fellowships at Duke University and Johns Hopkins University. In 2022, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Brazil.
Williams is a contemporary visual artist from South Carolina whose work has appeared in several exhibitions, including ‘Sun +Light’ at Polk Museum of Art in Lakeland, Florida, Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, South Carolina, and Residency Art Gallery in Inglewood, California; ‘Warm Water’ at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, and Weber State University in Ogden, Utah; and ‘Swim’ at Morton Fine Art in Washington, D.C. Most recently, Williams displayed his work at the Aqua and Scope Art Fair at Art Basel in Miami, Florida, and the Texas Contemporary Art Fair in Houston, Texas, and his permanent collections reside at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh; the Gibbes Museum in Charleston, South Carolina; Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, Georgia; Knoxville Museum of Art in Knoxville, Tennessee; Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington, Delaware; Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, Mississippi; Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham; and the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art in Asbury, New Jersey. He is a recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts Grant and Riley Institute Diversity Leadership Award. Williams holds a bachelor’s degree from the Savannah College of Art and Design and master’s degree from the University of North Carolina Greensboro.
