Autobiographical Elements of Richard Wright’s Haiku: Last Virtual Seminar of the Semester

Please join us for a Making the (Richard) Wright Connection virtual seminar – “Autobiographical Elements of Richard Wright’s Haiku” – led by Toru Kiuchi, Professor of English at Nihon University, Japan on Tuesday, May 17^th at 6:00 p.m. CST.

Abstract:  95.7 per cent of Wright’s haiku carry a season word. It was easier for Wright to return to his childhood memory of Mississippi, which was full of trees and flowers, than to use images taken from Paris. Sick in bed in Paris, Wright must have been trying to find a season word without going out, recalling his childhood days in Mississippi, which was “a whole world of emotion, of sounds and scents and colours.” Composing haiku, Wright returned not only to his childhood, but also to Chicago and New York days. Accordingly, his haiku comprise quite a few autobiographical elements in them. This lecture makes clear how Wright include his autobiographical factors in the composition of his haiku.

Please feel free to e-mail questions in advance for Professor Kiuchi to the Wright Connection (wrightconnection@ku.edu)  

 To attend the virtual seminar:

1) Go to https://desktopconnect.ku.edu/kiuchi

2) Select “Enter as a Guest”

3) Type your name in the box

4) Click on “Enter Room”

5) The virtual seminar “room” will open at the start time of the seminar.  If you try to enter before then, you will see a message that reads:  The meeting has not yet started.  You will be able to access the meeting once the host arrives.  Please wait.

All participants will need a Flash-based web browser and an Internet connection to access the virtual seminar.  Please feel free to email Keah Cunningham (keah@ku.edu) with any technical questions or issues. 

Additional information at www.wrightconnection.ku.edu

“Facing Death: The Fear of Death vs. the Death of Fear” - led by Abdul JanMohamed, Professor of English at the University of California (Berkeley)

Please join us for a Virtual Seminar - “Facing Death: The Fear of Death vs. the Death of Fear” - led by Abdul JanMohamed, Professor of English at the University of California (Berkeley) on Saturday, April 30 at 11:00 a.m. CST.

Abstract:  In my work on Native Son, and on Wright’s work in general, I have focused on the effects of the threat of death (lynching in Jim Crow society) as well as of the ensuing fear of death on the formation of individual psyche and subjectivity. And I have argued that all of Wright’s fiction is a systematic examination of the subject formed by the threat of death; it is an examination of how the threat/fear of death permeates every nook and cranny of the individual psyche. The virtual seminar, focusing in particular on Book Three of Native Son, will examine how Bigger Thomas faces his fear of death and finally overcomes it. Traditional literary criticism sees Book Three as the weakest part of Native Son; I will argue that it is the strongest and most powerful. My approach to this book and Wright’s work in general is based on the notion that the slave’s fear of death plays a crucial role in his/her enslavement and that conversely the overcoming of that fear can open the road to freedom.

It may be useful to keep in mind several statements by Wright, from Black Boy, regarding his view of lynching. By the age of eleven, he tells us, he “had already become as conditioned to [the] existence [of white racist society] as though I had been the victim of a thousand lynchings” (BB, 72). And when an older brother of a friend is lynched, the horror permeates the “deepest layers” of Wright’s consciousness and compels him “to give my entire imagination over to it, an act which blocked the spring of thought and feeling in me, creating a sense of distance between me and the world in which I lived” (BB, 165).
 Two short readings for the seminar (can also be found here)

• Biko ON DEATH
• Between the World and Me

Please feel free to e-mail questions in advance for Professor JanMohamed to the Wright Connection (wrightconnection@ku.edu)  

To attend the virtual seminar: 

1.Go to  https://desktopconnect.ku.edu/janmohamed 

2. Select “Enter as a Guest.” 

3.Type your name in the box. 

4. Click on “Enter Room.” 

5. The virtual seminar “room” will open at the start time of the seminar.  If you try to enter before then, you will see a message that reads:   

"The meeting has not yet started.  You will be able to access the meeting once the host arrives.  Please wait."

All participants will need a Flash-based web browser and an Internet connection to access the virtual seminar.  Please feel free to e-mail Keah Cunningham (keah@ku.edu) with any technical questions or issues.

Additional information at www.wrightconnection.ku.edu

“The Global Vision of Richard Wright” - led by Amritjit Singh, Langston Hughes Professor of English at Ohio University

Please join us for a Virtual Seminar - “The Global Vision of Richard Wright” - led by Amritjit Singh, Langston Hughes Professor of English at Ohio University on Saturday, April 23 at 10:00 a.m. CST.

 

Abstract: Our conversation would include among other things the following possible topics:  (a) the speaker’s own engagement with Wright’s writings since the 1970s;  (b) Wright’s non-fictional writings from the 1950s – such as Pagan Spain, White Man, Listen, Black Power and Color Curtain – and how these relatively neglected works by the novelist anticipate the cross-cultural, postcolonialist, and Black Atlantic perspectives that have emerged since the 1980s; (c) how Wright extends and expands the interrogation of high modernism by Harlem Renaissance writers such as Claude McKay, Langston Hughes,  Zora Neale Hurston and Wallace Thurman by injecting issues of social injustice and political freedom to create new iterations of modernism; (d) how Wright may be taught in the classroom in conjunction with other American and ethnic American writers.

Please feel free to e-mail questions in advance for Professor Singh to the Wright Connection (wrightconnection@ku.edu)   

To attend the virtual seminar:
 1) Go to https://desktopconnect.ku.edu/singh/. 
2)Select “Enter as a Guest.” 
3)Type your name in the box. 
4)Click on “Enter Room.” 
5)The virtual seminar “room” will open at the start time of the seminar.  If you try to enter before then, you will see a message that reads:  The meeting has not yet started.  You will be able to access the meeting once the host arrives.  Please wait.

All participants will need a Flash-based web browser and an Internet connection to access the virtual seminar.  Please feel free to e-mail Keah Cunningham (keah@ku.edu) with any technical questions or issues.

Additional information at www.wrightconnection.ku.edu

Best,

Maryemma Graham

Sarah Arbuthnot

Wright Connection Virtual Seminar

To celebrate the re-launch of the Wright Connection, we encourage HBW followers to our Virtual Seminar on Saturday, April 16, 2011 at 10:00 a.m. CST, featuring Jennifer Wallach, Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Texas.

For more information on how to register free of charge, click here and follow instructions

Abstract:
When explaining his decision to write his autobiography,Black Boy, Richard Wright once remarked that he did so in part because he realized that he was a “very average Negro.” He hoped that his story would be read as representative of the experiences of others who lacked his access to the reading public. Due to his extraordinary talent and unprecedented success as an African-American novelist, his claim initially sounds like false modesty. However, it also manifests his sensitivity to the fact that he did not walk through history unaccompanied. This seminar will demonstrate how Richard Wright’s life can be used as an example for teaching many aspects of African-American history. Topics covered will include Reconstruction, the Great Migration, African-American life during the Great Depression, and various African-American cultural and political responses to racial oppression.

About Jennifer Wallach:
Dr. Wallach is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Texas. She is a respected scholar of African-American History and the author of the recent Wright biography, Richard Wright: From Black Boy to World Citizen. Other publications include articles related to African-American history and the book Closer to the Truth than Any Fact: Memoir, Memory, and Jim Crow. 

Making the Wright Connection Website Re-launch

The HBW is pleased to announce the re-launch of our Wright Connection website.  The Wright Connection is an online community of scholars and teachers of the works of Richard Wright (1908-1960), the author of such major works as Uncle Tom’s Children, Native Son, and Black Boy. The community grows out of a fifteen-month program funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities that explored Richard Wright and his influence on the American idiom. The program included a two-week summer institute held from July 11-24, 2010 at the University of Kansas, and subsequent virtual seminars that used technology to foster collaboration among participants.

The site serves as a clearinghouse for all information about Richard Wright. We welcome announcements of new books, articles, reviews, and conferences, as well as discussions of new pedagogical approaches to teaching Wright. We also serve as an archive of past work on Wright, including the complete print run of the Richard Wright Newsletter (1991-2006) and podcasts of lectures by some of the world’s foremost scholars of Wright.