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.

ICYMI: The Last 2 Weeks in Black Writing (3/13 - 3/26)

- Stefanie Torres and Jennifer Colatosti recapped Kenton Rambsy's Hall Center talk, "'Characteristics of Negro Expression': Digital Humanities and African American Short Stories."

- Early in March at KU, former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey read poetry exploring the intersections of race, gender, science, and family.

- Buzzfeed staff member Tracy Clayton compiled some of Black Twitter's best responses to Starbucks' Race Together Initiative with #NewStarbucksDrinks.

- Book Riot recommended nonfiction reads for people who loved Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah.

- Caryl Phillips (the subject of Jerry Ward's post on Cambridge) talked to NPR about his new novel, The Lost Child, an updated take on Wuthering Heights.

- Toni Morrison urged artists to create even under difficult and painful social conditions in an article for The Nation's 150th anniversary issue.

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.