Thompson Room, Barker Center. Oct. 25-27, from 4:00 until 5:30 p.m.

Melvin Van Peebles, the maverick filmmaker best known as the writer, director and star of “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” will be delivering this semester’s Alain LeRoy Locke Lectures.

The LeRoy lecture series is co-sponsored by the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, the Department of African and African American Studies, and Basic Civitas Books (a division of the Perseus Books Group).

They are held in honor of the Harlem Renaissance luminary and Harvard scholar Alain Leroy Locke, and their purpose is “to bring distinguished persons to deliver lectures on topics related to the field of African-American Culture and history.”

Peebles’s intended topics at his evening lectures are “Tokyo Traffic & Sea Turtles Laying Eggs,” “Porsches & Pyramids,” and lastly “Urban Culture & Dreams Deferred.”

Elaborating on his cryptic lecture titles, Mr.Van Peebles’s publicity release explains: “The starting point in each of the three lectures are the insights to be gleaned from the juxtaposition of seemingly dissimilar, unencumbered, narrowly observed, generally held to be true facts, and how the aforementioned insights lead us back to the accommodations made by our 23, sometimes it seems even 24 chromosomes.”

Confused? Come out and hear Mr. Van Peebles clarify his positions in person. The lecture series promises to be provocative in the best sense of the word.