Patricia Hilliard-Nunn, a faculty member in the African American Studies Program at UF until her death in 2020, has been promoted posthumously to master lecturer.
UF awards Hilliard-Nunn posthumous promotion to master lecturer
Patricia Hilliard-Nunn, who inspired students in the African American Studies Program at the University of Florida and led a truth and reconciliation effort focused on the troubling history of racial violence in Alachua County before her death in August 2020, has been posthumously promoted to master lecturer.
“To my knowledge, no faculty member at UF has been promoted posthumously before now,” said DAVID RICHARDSON, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “I’m grateful that Provost Scott Angle and Danaya Wright, the president of the Faculty Senate, found a path to move this forward.”
Hilliard-Nunn, who earned her PhD in mass communications from Florida State University, used her scholarship to explore the history of racial violence in North Central Florida, documenting the extra-judicial killing of a group of people in Newberry in 1916. Active beyond the UF campus, she shared that history of violence during the Jim Crow era through programs in Gainesville-area schools, churches and at civic events.
She founded the Makare African Dance Family and was an independent media producer, artist, dancer, and advocate for social justice. A statue in her honor has been erected outside the Alachua County Courthouse in downtown Gainesville, a site where previously a statue of a Confederate soldier had been placed following Reconstruction from the Civil War.
Hilliard-Nunn’s promotion process from senior lecturer to master lecturer had begun before her death but had not been completed.
“This is the top rank in the Lecturer title series, analogous in the ranks of professors to full professor,” said Dean Richardson. “It recognizes mastery, eminence, and impact,” he said.
“Dr. Patricia Hilliard-Nunn’s impact on the African American Studies program was monumental,” said VINCENT ADEJUMO, senior lecturer in the program. “She was an excellent teacher of the discipline and cared deeply for her students. She also was very talented as a film maker, producing several projects for the program and was extraordinary in creating unique events that made a lifetime impact on those who attended.”
“I think a lot of people are happy to see this has been accomplished,” said Kenneth Nunn, Hilliard-Nunn’s husband, professor emeritus in the UF Levin College of Law and visiting professor at Howard University School of Law. “She put a lot of work into this promotion even as her health was declining,” he said.
“UF has honored students who have made the transition before their graduation by awarding posthumous degrees. I think it is a good thing that UF can do this for staff and faculty who make the transition while still employed,” Nunn said.
Nunn said some of his students now at Howard University studied under his wife. “They tell me she inspired them and helped them find their academic path while at UF.”
Nunn called his wife a “public intellectual” who sought ways to bring her scholarship beyond the bounds of the campus and into the community. “She modeled behavior that pierced the town-gown divide,” he said.
NKwanda Jah, founding director of the Cultural Arts Coalition of Gainesville, recalled the energy and expertise Hilliard-Nunn shared with the community surrounding UF. “She was qualified for any posting at the university, but she used her time working in East Gainesville to bring people together. She had great vision,” Jah said.
