Race and Displacement Symposium Tentative Schedule

Race and Displacement Symposium Tentative Schedule

THURSDAY, OCT. 1

*Times TBA*: Pick up participants at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport with University vans

4pm: Formal welcome to participants; hand out materials (folders, etc.) and answer any questions

*location TBA

7:30pm: Houston Baker keynote lecture
Location: Gorgas Library room 205.
Reception and book signing to follow.

Daytime events/speaker panels are all held at the Bryant Conference Center, located at 240 Bryant Drive on The University of Alabama Campus.


FRIDAY, OCT. 2

Location: Bryant Conference Center

8-9am: Coffee and refreshments


9-10:30am: PANEL 1: RACE AND BODIES

Participants:

Regina N. Barnett (Florida State U), “Lady Eve’s Garden Sings the Blues: Manifestations of Ájé in Gloria Naylor’s Bailey’s Café”

Ashon T. Crawley (Duke U), “He gay…: Rumor, Gossip and the Black Gospel Sound”

Deborah Katz (Brown U), “The Practice of Embodiment: Transatlantic Crossings and Black Female
Sexuality in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand”

Matt Dischinger (U of Alabama), “Returning from ‘Beyond the Bridge’: Postcolonial Hybridity in
Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day”

10:30-11am: Break

11am-12:30pm: PANEL 2: RACE AND PLACE

Participants:

Lauren Vedal (U of Wisconsin-Madison), “Immigrant Desire: Contesting Canadian Safety and Whiteness in In Another Place, Not Here”

Melanie Fritsch (U of Tübingen), “The Traveling Subject: Natural Rights Discourse in The Narrative of Robert Adams”

Walter Bosse (U of Cincinnati), “Upon the Public Highways: Travel and Race in Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition”

12:30-2pm: LUNCH (location TBA)

2:30-4pm: PANEL 3: RACE AND NATION

Participants:

Cassander L. Smith (Purdue U), “Washing the Ethiop Red: Sir Francis Drake’s Narrative Struggle with the Cimarrons of Panama”

Delia Hagen (U of California at Berkeley), “Nations, Migration, and Métis Subsistence Possibilities,
1860-1940”

Abigail Manzella (Tufts U), “Disorientation: Julie Otsuka’s Imprisoned Places”

4-5pm: Break

5:30-7pm: Dinner with Keynote Speakers and Conference Participants (location TBA)

7:30pm: Keynote Lecture/Performance by Marquetta Goodwine (Queen Quet)

Location: Morgan Auditorium

***Evening festivities TBA! Bring your dancing shoes!

SATURDAY, OCT. 3

Location: Bryant Conference Center

8-8:30am: Coffee and Refreshments

8:30-10am: PANEL 4: RACE AND IMAGINATION

Participants:

Jonathan Glover (U of Florida), “Moreau avec Cuvier, Kant avec Sade: Saint Domingue, Sara Baartman, and the Technologies of Imperial Desire”

Yumi Pak (UC San Diego), “An Oracular Swan-song?: American Literary Modernism, Modernity, and the Trope of Lynching in Jean Toomer’s Cane”

Kathrin Kottemann (U of New Orleans), “Cultural Schizophrenia and Post-Colonial Identity in Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain and Bernadine Evaristo’s Lara”

Laura Jones (Louisiana State U), “Barack Obama’s ‘A More Perfect Union:’ Was It a Post-Racial Moment?”

10-10:30am: Break

10:30am-12pm: (all) Roundtable Discussion: Description TBA

Race and Displacement on Facebook

Race and Displacement is on Facebook!

Race and Displacement Coordinating Committee

The Race and Displacement Symposium 2009 coordinating committee are, Phil Beidler (UA Dept. of English), Jessica Lacher-Feldman (UA Libraries), Maha Marouan (UA Department of Religious Studies) and Merinda Simmons (UA Department of Religious Studies. Our student assistant is Keke Pound. The logo and graphic design for the symposium was done by Jessica Peterson, a recent graduate of UA's MFA program in Book Arts.

Race and Displacement: Call for Papers

The thirty-third University of Alabama Symposium on English and American Literature, entitled this year, "Race and Displacement,” is scheduled for 1-3 October, 2009. The symposium focuses on the concept of racial diaspora—removals, migrations, colonial and post-colonial geographies, and transnational identities, both individual and collective. What is the relationship between race and place in the various senses of those terms? What does race have to do historically with place? What is the place of a given race, "its" place geographically, historically, in terms of social, educational, economic, and political traditions, hierarchies, power relations, etc.? What is the “place” of a person in relation to race, as well as in regard to other forms of difference—gender, sexuality, ethnicity; class, labor, ideology.

This symposium will be unique in that, in addition to presentations by one or two well-known academic and/or creative keynoters, conference papers will be the work of graduate students, chosen through competitive submission. A keynote lecture will be given by a prominent figure in critical race studies, Houston A. Baker, Jr. of Vanderbilt University. A creative presentation will feature Queen Quet, chieftess and spokesperson of the Gullah/Geechee Nation. Writers who have recently appeared in the series include Alice Walker and the late August Wilson. Graduate students selected as academic presenters would receive travel and lodging expenses. There is the possibility that the proceedings would also be published by Palgrave MacMillan, sponsors of the Signs of Race series, with the series editor having agreed to consider the volume. Our selection committee will begin reading submissions—completed essays, of 30-40 min. reading time, with brief cover letter—immediately. The deadline for submissions is May 15; selections should be announced by mid-May at the latest, so that participants can make fall travel plans. For paper submissions and further conference information, please contact Philip D. Beidler, Department of English, University of Alabama, Box 870244, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487. E-mail: pbeidler@english.as.ua.edu Phone: 205 348-8508