Celebrated keynote speaker

Lewis is a sought-after public speaker whose mainstage TED Talk has garnered over three million views. She has delivered keynote commencement addresses at venues ranging from the UN General Assembly and the Edinburgh International Festival to World Business Forum and Yale University, as well as numerous universities and organizations across the United States and abroad.

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All appearances

2021

New York University, Center for Black Visual Culture/Institute of African American Affairs, The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship, A book talk with Sarah Lewis, Matthew Fox-Amato and Deborah Willis

2021

Roger Williams University, School of Architecture, “Groundwork: Race and Aesthetics in the Era of Stand Your Ground Law”

2021

ASALH and PBS Books, To Make Their Own Way in the World, A Conversation with Deborah Willis, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, and Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, moderated by Ilisa Barbash

2021

Capella University, Commencement Address (Virtual)

2021

Rasmussen University, Annual Academic Symposium

2020

Museum of Tolerance, Mr. SOUL! Virtual Q+A, featuring Doug Blush, Nikki Giovanni, Melissa Haizlip, Blair Underwood, moderated by Sarah Lewis

2020

Christiane Amanpour show, Interviewed by Walter Isaacson

2020

C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, “The Circassian Beauties and the Caucasian War,” Managing Sight: African American Visual Tactics

2020

Harvard Book Store, Panel, To Make Their Own Way in the World book launch

2020

The Graduate Center, City University of New York, “Change: How Artists Lead the Way”

2020

Vera List Center for Art and Politics, White Lies: A Tribute to Maurice Berger [Memorial Panel discussion]

2020

University of North Carolina, Greensboro. College of Visual and Performing Arts Virtual Master Class Series

2020

Isaac Julien in conversation with Angela Y. Davis, moderated by Sarah Lewis, A partnership with McEvoy Foundation for the Arts and Museum of African Diaspora

2019

Harvard University, 19th Annual Navin Narayan Memorial Lecture, The Committee on Degrees in Social Studies

2019

Yale School of Art, Commencement Address Speaker

2019

Yale School of Art, Commencement Address Speaker

2019

Opening for Amanda Theater, Array, Los Angeles

2019

University of Kentucky, Robert C. May Photography Lecture, Vision & Justice

2018

Tanner Lecture in Human Values, “Images, Place, and Cultural Memory,” Southern Utah University

2018

Aspen Ideas Festival, Conversation with Carrie Mae Weems

2018

“On monuments: place, time, memory,” Harvard University Committee on the Arts (HUCA), Tribute to President Drew Gilpin Faust

2018

Harvard University, Neiman Foundation, 80th Anniversary celebration