Conference Report: College Language Association Convention, 2015

[by Meredith Wiggins]

The 2015 College Language Association Conference for 2015 was held April 8-11, 2015, in Dallas, Texas, with the theme of "Expanding Frontiers: Freedom, Resistance, and Transnational Identities in Languages and Literatures."

CLA is always a challenging and welcoming community of scholars of African American literature and culture. This year, however, was especially exciting, as 2015 marked the 75th annual meeting of CLA's conference.

As has become tradition, representatives from HBW and from KU were out in full force - tabling, giving presentations, and generally having a great time!

Langston Hughes Center Present: SELMA Panel Discussion

[by Meredith Wiggins]

KU's Langston Hughes Center sponsored a screening of recent Best Picture nominee Selma followed by a panel discussion about the film and its resonances to current-day issues on Wednesday, March 25.  More than 200 students, faculty, and community members attended the screening in Wescoe Hall.

Selma depicts the 1965 civil rights marches from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery, and Dr. Shawn Alexander, an associate professor in the Department of African and African-American Studies and director of the LHC, noted that he picked March 25 for the screening because that was the date when marchers actually arrived in Montgomery.

After the screening, a panelist of three scholars from KU--independent filmmaker and professor of film and media studies Kevin Willmott, assistant professor of American studies Elizabeth Esch, and African and African American studies graduate student Melissa Foree--responded to the film and engaged audience questions about the continued relevance of civil rights work today.

Of Folklore, Feminism, and Fire: An Afternoon with KU Associate Professor of English Giselle Anatol

[by Creighton Nicholas Brown]

University of Kansas Professor of English Giselle Anatol spoke about and read from her newly published book, Things That Fly in the Night: Female Vampires in Literature of the Circum-Caribbean and African Diaspora to a packed audience at the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas on Thursday, April 2.

Reflecting on the genesis of her project, Anatol said,  “When I was a child, my mother, aunts and uncles, and grandmother regaled me with stories of the soucouyant, a demonic figure from Trinidadian folk culture.” During the day the soucouyant appeared as an old woman, but when night fell, she “peeled off her skin, transformed into a ball of fire, and flew from house to house, where she sucked the blood of her unsuspecting neighbors.” The soucouyant is also known as Ole-Higue or Loogaroo in other Caribbean cultures.

Performance: Richard Wright in 2015

[by Jerry W. Ward, Jr.]

Despite my having “performed” Richard Wright with a modicum of success some years ago in a Chautauqua series sponsored by the Mississippi Humanities Council, I know virtually nothing about performance theory as an “interdisciplinary area of study and critical method,” as it is discussed in the recent book Black Performance Theory (2014), edited by Thomas F. DeFrantz and Anita Gonzalez. For me, performing Wright was a matter of absorbing what I could of his personality and changing states of mind from his writings, listening to his recorded voice, and praying that on some spiritual level Wright would channel my imagination. I am not an actor, so I just gathered courage and, one magical night, I did become Richard Wright. At least, that was what several people in the audience told me.

Poetry and History: An Evening with U.S. Poet Laureate (2012-2014) Natasha Trethewey

[by Meredith Wiggins]

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey spoke and read poems about art, family, and race as part of the Hall Center for the Humanities 2014-2015 Humanities Lecture Series on Tuesday, March 3.

All her poetry begins with a question she wants to answer, Trethewey said. In the case of 2012's Thrall, her most recent collection, the primary question was how Enlightenment thinking has shaped the current language of race, including the language that her father, a white poet, used to describe his biracial daughter.

Trethewey conceived of Thrall as a conversation with her father. They used to give readings together, she said, where her father would sometimes read a poem titled "Her Swing," which described his biracial daughter as "a crossbreed"--something, she added, "that it is not possible for a person to be."

Trethewey always felt unsettled by the poem, which she said made her feel like the Venus Hottentot, body on display for an audience's eyes. Her father loved her and encouraged her to a be a poet, she said, but he also dreaded it "because he knew I would set the story straight."

“Characteristics of Negro Expression”: Kenton Rambsy on the Importance of Digital Humanities in the Study of African American Short Stories

[by Stefanie Torres and Jennifer Colatosi]

On February 11, 2015, Hall Center Research Fellow and KU English Ph.D. candidate Kenton Rambsy presented on notable outcomes of his dissertation research in his interdisciplinary graduate research workshop, “Characteristics of Negro Expression: Digital Humanities and African American Short Stories,” at the University of Kansas.

Black Literary Suite Kick-Off: Black Writers with a Kansas Connection

[by Meredith Wiggins]




On Wednesday, February 25, from 3 - 4:30 p.m., HBW and the KU Libraries co-hosted Black Literary Suites: Black Writers with a Kansas Connection.

The kick-off event featured a poster display, a self-guided audio tour, a display of relevant books from HBW's collections, and a preview of HBW's video tribute to John A. Williams.


 








Over the course of the 90-minute event, dozens of students, faculty, staff, and community members gathered to learn more about the history of black writers like Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Frank Marshall Davis, and Langston Hughes in the Sunflower State.












The BLS poster display will remain up in Watson Library's fourth-floor Hallway Gallery through most of March, so if you haven't gotten a chance to visit yet, there's still time! 

Many thanks to all those who attended the event - and especially to the KU Libraries for their generous support of HBW's programming!

Black Literary Suite: Black Writers with a Kansas Connection

Langston Hughes.  Gwendolyn Brooks.  Frank Marshall Davis.  Kevin Young.

What do they have in common?

At various points in their lives, each of them lived in Kansas. Brooks stayed for mere weeks, only living here for a month after she was born, while the others lived in Kansas for years.

Next week, on Wednesday, February 25, help close out Black History Month by joining HBW at Watson Library for a celebration of Black Writers with a Kansas Connection.  From 3 - 4:30 p.m., come enjoy refreshments while you learn about the legacy of African American writers in the Sunflower State.

RSVP at our Facebook event page, and we'll see you there!

Black Poetry after the Black Arts Movement: A Closer Look

[by Kristin Joi Coffey]

The Project on the History of Black Writing is excited to announce our 2015 Summer Institute, Black Poetry after the Black Arts Movement, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Annually, the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Division of Education funds a variety of summer institutes for educators. This year, Black Poetry continues the work undertaken by our 2013 institute, Don’t Deny My Voice: Reading and Teaching African American Poetry, and gives more focused attention to a reassessment of African American poetry from 1960 to the present.

Reading List: Staff Recommendations for the National African American Read-In

Looking for a way to celebrate Black History Month? The National African American Read-In began on Sunday, February 1, and will go through Saturday, February 28.

Sponsored by the Black Caucus of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and NCTE, Read-In events "can be as simple as bringing together friends to share a book, or as elaborate as arranging public readings and media presentations that feature professional African American writers." More details are available on the site.

Behind the cut, some HBW staff members provide suggestions for African American texts to seek out for an NAARI event - or just for some solo reading time.

Nathaniel Mackey, Black Poetry after the Black Arts Movement Speaker, Awarded 2015 Bollingen Prize

HBW is proud to congratulate poet Nathaniel Mackey, who will serve as a speaker at HBW's upcoming NEH Summer Institute Black Poetry after the Black Arts Movement, on winning Yale University's prestigious 2015 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry!

"I'm thrilled to learn that I've been awarded the Bollingen Prize," Mackey says. "Joining so distinguished a group of recipients makes it especially moving. I'm deeply honored by the recognition and endorsement the award represents."

Read more about Mackey's honor here, and apply to study under Mackey at HBW's BPBAM Summer Insitute here.

Black Poetry after the Black Arts Movement

[by Meredith Wiggins]

Some of the biggest names in African American poetry will converge on KU this summer when the Project on the History of Black Writing hosts a two-week institute on the subject of Black Poetry after the Black Arts Movement.

And HBW hopes that you'll be a part of it.

Sponsored by a $156,000 grant from the National Endowment on the Humanities, the residential institute will be held July 19 through August 1. The NEH Summer Scholars, a group of 25 college and university teachers selected to take part, will join more than two dozen scholars to study how Black poetry both reflects and impacts social change.

For more information about the institute and about how to apply, follow the jump!

HBW Open House and Jayhawk Sneak Peek Weekend

[by Meredith Wiggins]

On October 16 and 17, six prospective graduate students from across the United States visited KU as part of the second annual Jayhawk Sneak Peek Weekend, an initiative dedicated to increasing graduate student diversity in the English Department through recruiting students from traditionally under-enrolled populations.

Excited to play a part in this important weekend, HBW elected to hold our official Open House while the prospective students were in town.  Partnering with the Sneak Peek Committee to provide a brunch for visitors, we opened our office doors to the KU campus in the hopes of sharing our work with a wider audience.