Deborah Willis, university professor and chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, will deliver the keynote address at Bentley University’s 28th annual celebration breakfast honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Tuesday, January 28, 2014, from 8:00 to 10:00 a.m. Willis has pursued a dual professional career as an art photographer and as one of the nation's leading historians of African American photography and curators of African American culture.

Willis has an affiliated appointment with the College of Arts and Sciences, Africana Studies at NYU. She was named one of the "100 Most Important People in Photography" by American Photography magazine. She was a 2005 Guggenheim Fellow and Fletcher Fellow, and a 2000 MacArthur Fellow. In 1996 she received the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation award.

Her newest book, Out [o] Fashion Photography: Embracing Beauty, explores historical perceptions of beauty and desire through artistic and ethnographic imagery. Her extensive book list also includes Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery (with Barbara Krauthamer), Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present, and Obama: the Historic Campaign in Photographs. Her book Michelle Obama, The First Lady in Photographs, received the 2010 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work Biography/Autobiography.

Space is limited and seating by reservation only. For more information call 781.891.2001 or email ga_mlkbreakfast@bentley.edu. The program is sponsored by the President’s Office, Multicultural Center, and the Center for Alumni, Parents and Friends.