Briana Scurry
INTRODUCTION
A member of the National Soccer Hall of Fame, she is known as one of soccer’s most talented and influential goalkeepers. She made 173 international appearances for the United States that led to a World Cup and two Olympic gold medals. She was a founding member of the first professional women’s soccer league – she overcame a traumatic brain injury and is now one of the nation’s foremost advocates for increased awareness for traumatic brain injuries – AND she is a permanent feature in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Her story is chronicled in her memoir, My Greatest Save, and her feature-length CBS Documentary, The Only. Please welcome Briana Scurry!
BIOGRAPHY
Briana Scurry is widely recognized as one of the world’s most talented and influential goalkeepers. Scurry’s 173 international appearances as one of the first African American and openly gay professional athletes championed equality and diversified the sport. In 2017, Scurry was inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame. Named starting goalkeeper for the United States Women’s National Team in 1994, Scurry led the team on an illustrious run that included two Olympic gold medals. In the 1999 FIFA World Cup Championship – which represented one of the most seminal events in American athletic history – Briana made the iconic penalty kick save that carried the United States to victory. Scurry pioneered the first paid professional women’s soccer league as a founding player in 2001. A debilitating concussion led to her retirement in 2010. Since then, Scurry has repurposed her visibility to become one of the nation’s foremost advocates for increased awareness for traumatic brain injuries.
Through her impact on the landscape of women’s soccer and American sports culture, Briana was selected to the United States Women’s National Team’s All-Time Best XI and was selected as the permanent Title IX Exhibit in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
In 2022, Scurry released her best-selling memoir, My Greatest Save, and was also the subject of The Only, a CBS feature-length documentary chronicling her life. In 2023, Scurry served as the commencement speaker and was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Public Service degree from her alma mater, The University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Laurent Dubois
INTRODUCTION
Laurent Dubois is one of the world’s leading historians of the Atlantic world and one of the most influential scholars of Haiti, democracy, and global sports culture. He is the John L. Nau III Bicentennial Professor in the History and Principles of Democracy at the University of Virginia, where he also serves as co-director for academic affairs of the Democracy Initiative. His work has shaped public understanding of the Caribbean, France, North America, and the role of culture in political life. Dubois is also an award-winning author whose books on history, music, and soccer have reached wide audiences. Please welcome Laurent Dubois.
BIOGRAPHY
Laurent Dubois is the John L. Nau III Bicentennial Professor in the History and Principles of Democracy at the University of Virginia. A specialist in the history and culture of the Atlantic world, he studies Haiti, the Caribbean, North America, and France. Dubois joined UVA in 2021 and also serves as co-director for academic affairs of the Democracy Initiative. In this role, he leads the Initiative’s research and pedagogical missions and directs the John L. Nau III History and Principles of Democracy Lab, the permanent core lab that anchors the Initiative’s work.
Before arriving at UVA, Dubois spent a decade at Duke University, where he founded the Forum for Scholars and Publics and taught in the departments of romance studies and history. He previously served as co-director of Duke’s Franklin Humanities Center Haiti Laboratory, helping to shape groundbreaking interdisciplinary work on Haitian history and culture.
Dubois is the author of seven books. His early work, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787–1804, won the Frederick Douglass Prize and three additional book awards. His 2012 book, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His research on global soccer includes Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France (University of California Press, 2010) and The Language of the Game: How to Understand Soccer (2018), which have established him as a leading public scholar of the sport. His cultural history of music, The Banjo: America’s African Instrument, was supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Humanities Center Fellowship, and a Mellon New Directions Fellowship.
His most recent book, co-authored with Richard Turits, is Freedom Roots: Histories from the Caribbean (University of North Carolina Press, 2019). Dubois’s essays on history, politics, music, and sports have appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Slate, and Sports Illustrated.
Dubois holds a Ph.D. in anthropology and history from the University of Michigan and a B.A. in anthropology and English from Princeton University.