Archive for the ‘African Diasporas’ Category
UO Symposium on African American Literature Featured Outstanding Scholars
Left to right: Emily Lordi, Courtney Thorsson, Salamishah Tillet, Jennifer Williams, Eve Dunbar (photo by Chelsea Bullock)
March 2, 2012—More than a hundred students, faculty and community members attended the symposium “Place and Displacement in African American Literature,” which took place in the Browsing Room of the UO Knight Library on March 2. Courtney Thorsson, a University of Oregon assistant professor of English, organized the group of scholars, who gave talks about their research. Presenters included faculty from Vassar College, University of Massachusetts, University of Pennsylvania, Goucher College, Duke University, and the UO.
Professor Eve Dunbar of Vassar College spoke about famed Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston’s ethnographic works Mules and Men and Tell My Horse. Dunbar invited audience members to consider the role of the American nationalism in Hurston’s writings.
UO Today #480: Myriam Chancy
Myriam Chancy, English, University of Cincinnati, discusses her unique identity as a Haitian-Canadian author living in the U.S. She also talks about Haiti’s uneasy position in the Caribbean and Latin America.
She gave a talk titled “Submission or Omission: Haiti’s Challenge in Latin America” on April 14, 2011 as the Bartolomé de las Casas Lecturer in Latin American Studies. This was also an African Diasporas in the Americas Roundtable Event, co-sponsored by the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies, Center for the Study of Women in Society, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Romance Languages, Latin American Studies, Department of Ethnic Studies, The Americas Steering Committee, Newman Center, Oregon Humanities Center and the Knight Law School.
Symposium: “Place and Displacement in African American Literature”
| March 2, 2012 | ||
| 10:00 am | to | 4:30 pm |
Knight Library
Browsing Room
1501 Kincaid St.
- Eve Dunbar (Vassar), “Place and Displacement in the Ethnographic and Literary Writings of Zora Neale Hurston”
- Courtney Thorsson (U Oregon), “Vertamae Grosvenor’s Revolutionary Recipes”
- Emily Lordi (U Mass), “’Move’: Literary Historiography and the Placing of Lucille Clifton”
- Salamishah Tillet (U Penn), “African Mailman: Nina Simone, Africa, and a Global Civil Rights Aesthetics”
- Jennifer Williams (Goucher College), “The Erotics of Travel in African American Women’s Fiction”
- Karla Holloway (Duke), response to panelists and “Legal Boundedness of Identity in African American and African Diasporic Literature”
Love Magic in the Kitchen—Scholars Share Research on Dangerous Dependencies, Domestic Slavery and Servitude
(l to r): Nara Milanich; Nicole von Germeten; Russ Tomlin; Kris Lane; Michelle McKinley; Law School dean Michael Moffitt; Rachel O'Toole; and Elizabeth Kuznesof (photo by E. Hoffman).
May 4, 2012—Dozens of faculty members, administrators, visiting scholars, and students participated in a roundtable organized by law professor Michelle McKinley and held at the UO Knight Library on May 4. “Dangerous Dependencies: Domestic Slavery and Servitude in the Americas” featured the research of scholars who specialize in Latin American studies across disciplines.
Scholars came from New York City, New Orleans, southern California, Kansas, Corvallis and Eugene to present papers and discuss research ranging from historical legal research on cooperative sorcery and conflict to modern day domestic service of children and women in Latin America. UO senior vice provost for academic affairs Russ Tomlin raised profound and pertinent questions in his opening remarks: “How do women retain dignity in the face of servitude? Why do good people impose servitude?”