Dear Members of the Georgetown University Community:
I have the pleasure of announcing Soyica Diggs Colbert, Ph.D. (C’01) as Interim Provost, effective today. Dr. Colbert is the Idol Family Professor who has taught in the departments of Black Studies and Performing Arts and most recently held the position of Vice President for Interdisciplinary Initiatives. She previously was Interim Dean of Georgetown College of Arts and Sciences.
A talented scholar and respected professor, she has taken on many leadership roles during her 11 years as a faculty member at Georgetown. She has served as Vice Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, Chair of the Department of Performing Arts, Director of the Theater and Performance Studies Program, Director of Arts Initiatives, as a member of the Racial Justice Working Group, and as Chair of the Task Force on Gender Equity.
Her scholarship is highly regarded and wide-ranging: she is the author of the acclaimed book, Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry (Yale University Press, 2021), The African American Theatrical Body: Reception, Performance, and the Stage (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and Black Movements: Performance and Cultural Politics (Rutgers University Press, 2017); the editor of a special issue on African American Review on Black Performance (2012); and the co-editor of The Psychic Hold of Slavery: Legacies in American Expressive Culture (Rutgers University Press, 2016) and Race and Performance After Repetition (Duke University Press, 2020).
She has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, and, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, has received a Schomburg Scholars-in-Residence Fellowship, Woodrow Wilson Foundation Career Enhancement Fellowship, Stanford Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship, Mellon Summer Research Grant and the Robert W. Woodruff Library Fellowship.
She has engaged beyond the University in a number of ways: as an Associate Director at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C.; writing in many national newspapers and publications; as a lecturer nationally and internationally; and as a Creative Content Producer for The Public Theatre’s audio play, shadow/land and a curator for the exhibition “Art is Energy”: Lorraine Hansberry, World Builder at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).
Dr. Colbert is a terrific leader, faculty member and administrator and we look forward to the contributions she will make as Interim Provost. She has our gratitude for taking on this position at this time of significance for our University community.
Please join me in welcoming Dr. Colbert to the role of Interim Provost.
Sincerely,
Robert M. Groves
Interim President