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Convocation welcomes the beginning of the new academic year at Ramapo College. It is an academic ceremony that highlights Ramapo’s summer reading selection and provides an experiential learning opportunity for all students.
The 2026 Opening Convocation will be held Tuesday, August 25th at 1:30 pm in our Bradley Center Arena. This year’s program features guest speaker, Adenike Marie Davidson, PhD from Delaware State University. Dr. Davidson will introduce author Octavia Butler (1947–2006) and her novel The Parable of the Sower, the first of her highly acclaimed Earthseed series. It is celebrated for its startlingly prescient depiction of near-future environmental collapse, economic crises, and the rise of charismatic, nationalist political figures.
About Keynote Speaker Adenike Marie Davidson, PhD
Dr. Davidson is the Dean of the College of Humanities, Education, and Social Sciences at Delaware State University, where she also serves as Professor of English and Program Director of Women’s and Gender Studies. A scholar of American and African American literature, she brings over two decades of teaching, research, and academic leadership to her work.
Dr. Davidson earned her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, College Park, her MA in African American Studies from UCLA, and is the author of The Black Nation Novel: Imagining Homeplaces in Early African-American Literature and several book chapters and journal articles. Her scholarship centers on American and African American literary traditions, feminist theory, and the intersections of race, gender, and identity.
An avid reader, her latest passion is Young Adult Fiction, and she welcomes any new authors to add to her list. She also is passionate about dystopian and apocalyptic fiction and films.
About Author Octavia Estelle Butler
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER was a renowned African American author who received a MacArthur “Genius” Grant and PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work. Born in Pasadena in 1947, she was raised by her mother and her grandmother. She was the author of several award-winning novels including PARABLE OF THE SOWER (1993), which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and PARABLE OF THE TALENTS (1995) winner of the Nebula Award for the best science fiction novel published that year. She was acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations in stories that range from the distant past to the far future.
Though the MacArthur Grant made life easier in later years, she struggled for decades when her dystopian novels exploring themes of Black injustice, global warming, women’s rights and political disparity were, to say the least, not in commercial demand.
She passed away on February 24, 2006. At the time of her death, interest in her books was beginning to rise, and in recent years, sales of her books have increased enormously as the issues she addressed in her Afro-Futuristic, feminist novels and short fiction have only become more relevant.
Butler, Octavia E., About the Author, 4 June 2026, https://www.octaviabutler.com/theauthor, jules@octaviabutlerenerprises.com
2025 Convocation Dais Party
2025 Convocation Panel Discussion with Keynote Speaker Morgan Talty
2025 Convocation audience
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