With the exception of those NAACP Image Awards, Tyler Perry will most likely never win any important awards, or garner any major accolades.

But perhaps the next best thing is to be the subject of a seminar held, at a prestigious university, made up of important and influential scholars, discussing the impact and importance of his work.

And that's exactly what's happening in November at Block Cinema, located right in the heart of the campus of Northwestern University, in Evanston Illinois. The university will conduct a panel called Madea's Big Scholarly Roundtable: Perspectives on the Media of Tyler Perry.

According to the description, the panel will "consider Perry’s extensive body of work from a variety of perspectives, exploring such topics as his theatrical roots, his works’ connections to “the” African American church, the highbrow/lowbrow tensions his works stir up, and the ways that class, region, gender and sexuality signify in his screen and stage productions, as well as in the discourses surrounding Perry himself."

Those participating on the panel will be: Mark Anthony Neal (Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African & African-American Studies, Duke University), Racquel Gates (Assistant Professor, Center for the Arts, CUNY College of Staten Island), Daniel O. Black (Professor of English, Clark-Atlanta University), Brittney Cooper (Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies & Africana Studies, Rutgers University), and E. Patrick Johnson (Carlos Montezuma Professor of Performance Studies and African American Studies, Northwestern University).

And the moderator for the event will be Miriam Petty (Assistant Professor, Departments of Radio/TV/Film and of African American Studies, Northwestern University).

WOW! That's a pretty distinguished group of eggheads they've got. Not even Spike could boast of a panel like that discussing him and his films.

The event will take place on Weds November 28, starting at 5PM; and, yes, it's free and open the public.