2021-22 Courage Speaker Series

A former criminal prosecutor and civil rights attorney, Dana Nessel was sworn in as Michigan’s 54th Attorney General on January 1, 2019. A graduate of the University of Michigan and Wayne State University Law School, Attorney General Nessel lives in southeast Michigan with her wife, Alanna Maguire, and her twin sons, Alex and Zach.

Christina Wolbrecht is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. J. Kevin Corder is Professor of Political Science at Western Michigan University. His books include Counting Women's Ballots (with Christina Wolbrecht, Cambridge, 2016), which received the 2017 Victoria Schuck Award, and The Fed and the Credit Crisis (2012).

Deirdre Cooper Owens is The Charles and Linda Wilson Professor in the History of Medicine and Director of the Humanities in Medicine program at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. She is also an Organization of American Historians’ (OAH) Distinguished Lecturer. A popular public speaker, she has published essays, book chapters, and blog pieces on a number of issues that concern African American experiences. Her first book, Medical Bondage: Race, Gender and the Origins of American Gynecology (UGA Press, 2017) won the 2018 Darlene Clark Hine Book Award from the OAH as the best book written in African American women’s and gender history.

Sarah Deer is a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma and a University Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas. Her 2015 book, The Beginning and End of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America is the culmination of over 25 years of working with survivors and has received several awards, including the Best First Book award from the Native American Indigenous Studies Association.

Denice Frohman is a poet, educator, and performer from New York City. She is a CantoMundo Fellow, former Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion, and National Association of Latino Arts & Cultures grant recipient. Her poems have appeared in The Adroit Journal, Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color, Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism, and garnered over 10 million views online. She’s featured on national and international stages, including The Apollo, The White House, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and over 200 colleges and universities. She has a Master’s in Education and co-organizes #PoetsforPuertoRico. She lives in Philadelphia.