“RICHARD WRIGHT AT 100”
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
DEPARTMENT OF LETTERS, UNIVERSITY OF BEIRA INTERIOR, PORTUGAL
VENUE: ANFITEATRO DA PARADA – PÓLO 1 - UBI
FREE ADMITTANCE
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
DEPARTMENT OF LETTERS, UNIVERSITY OF BEIRA INTERIOR, PORTUGAL
VENUE: ANFITEATRO DA PARADA – PÓLO 1 - UBI
FREE ADMITTANCE
FRIDAY, 28/11/2008:
9:00 Free registration and coffee
10:00 Keynote Address:
MARIA ISABEL CALDEIRA, Universidade de Coimbra (PORTUGAL) “'Without the Consolation of Tears': Violence Without Regeneration in Richard Wright”
Apresentação/ Introduction: Paula Elyseu Mesquita, Universidade da Beira Interior
11:00 Panel I
Moderador/Chair: Noel Polk, Mississippi State University/Editor of the Mississippi Quarterly Review (USA)
SARITA CANNON, San Francisco State University (USA): “Engaging Heads and Hearts: Teaching Richard Wright at the Turn of the 21st Century”
MARIA LUÍSA BRANCO, Universidade da Beira Interior (PORTUGAL): Towards a Pedagogical Reading of Richard Wright’s Autobiographical Black Boy
SOPHIA EMMANOUILIDOU, Greek Ministry of Education (GREECE): “Liminalities of Space and Identity: Self-Conceptualization in Richard Wright’s Rite of Passage and The Man Who Lived Underground”
ESTHER SÁNCHEZ-PARDO, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (SPAIN) “Resistance, Confession, Resignification: Richard Wright’s The Man Who Lived Underground”
12:15 Lunch Break
14:15 Panel II
Chair: Teresa Tavares (Universidade de Coimbra)
ANA MARIA FRAILE, Universidad de Salamanca (SPAIN): “Reading Native Son in the Context of the (African) American Jeremiad and American Exceptionalism”
JONATHAN AUSTAD, Chadron State College (USA): “To the Left of Wright: The Manifesto of the Communist Party’s Influence on Richard Wright’s Native Son”
KALENDA EATON, Armstrong Atlantic State University (USA) "Jumping up to get Beat Down? Reflections on the Perils of Black Progress in Richard Wright's 12 Million Black Voices and Black Power
JAMES PETERSON, “Native Sons and the Roots of Rage: Discerning the Bigger Figures in Hip Hop Culture”
15:30 Coffee Break
16:00 Screening of Spike Lee’s documentary When the Levees Broke – A Requiem in Four Acts, a social portrait of New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina (Winner of 3 Venice International Film Awards, 2006)
17:15 Pausa para Café/ Coffee Break
17:30 Panel III
Moderadora/Chair: Luísa Branco (Universidade da Beira Interior)
MARTHA SATZ, Southern Methodist University (USA): “Retaining All the Jewels of the Soul - The Ongoing Dialogue between Protest and Affirmation”
VAUGHN RASBERRY, University of Chicago (USA), “On Cosmopolitanism and the Postcolony: Rethinking Richard Wright on Culture”
LINDA CHAVERS, Harvard University (USA)"Revolutions Under the Skin: Deadly Resistance in Wright's Uncle Tom's Children"
HASAN BOYNUKARA/BÜLENT C. TANRINATIR, Yüzüncü Yıl University (TURKEY): “As a Source of Sorrow and Obstacle to Self-Discovery: Women in Black Boy”
19:00 Venue: Wool Manufacturing Museum, UBI
"The Freedom of Information Act" - poetry reading by Walter Robert Gholson, III, author of Blues and Black America / Port wine will be served
20:30 – Speakers’ Dinner offered by the Embassy of the U. S. in Lisbon
Restaurante Soda Cáustica
SÁBADO/SATURDAY, 29/11/2008
10:30 Panel IV
Moderadora/Chair: Mário Jorge Torres, Universidade de Lisboa
SOSTENE MASSIMO ZANGARI, Universitá di Milano (ITALY), “Modernism as Language of Community: Richard Wright’s Lawd Today”
GRAHAM BARNFIELD, University of East London (UK), "American Structure: Richard Wright, Pulp Publishing and Federal One"
CARLOS BROSSARD, Harvard University (USA): “Chicago, the University of Chicago and Richard Wright’s Lawd Today”
ARTHUR EDGAR E. SMITH, University of Sierra Leone (SIERRA LEONE), “Blueprint for the Agenda of a Socially Conscious Writer in Wright’s Autobiographical Novel Black Boy”
11:15 Coffee Break
11:30 Closing Session by Keynote Speaker
JOYCE A. JOYCE, Temple University (USA): "Crime and Violence: Richard Wright's Prediction for the Future."
Apresentação/ Introduction: Paula Elyseu Mesquita (Universidade da Beira Interior)
Organisation: Paula Elyseu Mesquita / Faculty of Arts and Letters / Department of Letters - University of Beira Interior
Scientific Board: Joyce A. Joyce, Isabel Caldeira, Noel Polk, Esther Sánchez-Pardo, Mário Jorge Torres, Paula Elyseu Mesquita
Secretarial Support Staff: Mércia Pires (Faculty of Arts and Letters, mercia@ubi.pt) and Paula Fernandes (Department of Letters, letras@ubi.pt)
Graphic Design: Madalena Sena (msena@ubi.pt)
Conference, travel, and accommodation info available upon request to: pmesquita@ubi.pt
BIOS OF SPEAKERS:
PROFESSOR JOYCE A. JOYCE (USA), “A 1995 recipient of an American Book Award for Literary Criticism for her collection of essays Warriors, Conjurers, and Priests: Defining African-centered Literary Criticism, Joyce A. Joyce is also the author of Richard Wright’s Art of Tragedy, Ijala: Sonia Sanchez and the African Poetic Tradition, Black Studies as Human Studies: Critical Essays and Interviews, and editor of Conversations with Sonia Sanchez. Having received her Ph. D. from the University of Georgia in 1979, Professor Joyce taught for ten years at the University of Maryland—College Park, three years at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln, and five years at Chicago State University where she was professor of English, associate director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center, coordinator of the Honors Program, and chairperson of the Black Studies Department. From 1997 to 2001, she was chairperson of the African-American Studies Department at Temple University, where she is currently a professor in the English Department. In June 2008, Professor Joyce was one of two keynote speakers at the American Embassy in Paris at the International Centennial Celebration of Richard Wright’s birthday, sponsored by The American University in Paris.
She has published articles on Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Margaret Walker, Arthur P. Davis, Toni Cade Bambara, E. Ethelbert Miller, Askia Touré, Gil Scott-Heron, and Sonia Sanchez. Her edited book entitled Conversations with Sonia Sanchez is currently in press. Her fields of expertise include African-American literary criticism, African-American poetry and fiction, feminist theory, and Black lesbian writers.
She has published articles on Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Margaret Walker, Arthur P. Davis, Toni Cade Bambara, E. Ethelbert Miller, Askia Touré, Gil Scott-Heron, and Sonia Sanchez. Her edited book entitled Conversations with Sonia Sanchez is currently in press. Her fields of expertise include African-American literary criticism, African-American poetry and fiction, feminist theory, and Black lesbian writers.
PROFESSOR MARIA ISABEL CALDEIRA, UNIVERSITY OF COIMBRA (PORTUGAL). Keynote address: “Violence Without Regeneration in Richard Wright”. Professor Caldeira is Associate Professor in the Anglo-American Studies Department, Faculty of Letters, University of Coimbra. She teaches American Literature and Culture and African American Literature and Culture. She has directed the Institute for North-American Studies at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Coimbra and the MA programme in American Literature and until recently she was President of the Portuguese Association for Anglo-American Studies. Professor Caldeira has published widely in the field of African American Literature and African American modernism, and her research is especially concerned with African American women’s writing. Her research fields are American Literature, African American Literature and comparative studies of African American literature and African literatures in Portuguese. She has published mainly on Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Jean Toomer, Sherley Anne Williams, Gayl Jones, The Harlem poets and the Black Aesthetic poets, racism, and the Angolan fictionist Pepetela and Cape Verdean poetry. Among her publications are American Literature (Lisbon: Open University, 1999), co-authored, and Novas Histórias Literárias/New Literary Histories – Minerva, Coimbra, 2004.
PROFESSOR WALTER ROBERT GHOLSON III currently lectures at Gloucester College, New Jersey, where he is also is counselor for international students. Among his diversified academic activities, he holds a BA in Journalism from the University of Nebraka and obtained his Education Doctorate in Education Leadership at Temple University. He is also a poet and collage artist. The title of his collection of poetry is Blues in Black America.
PROFESSOR KALENDA EATON
PROFESSOR NOEL POLK, MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY (USA), session chair, is Emeritus Professor of English and Editor of The Mississippi Quarterly at Mississippi State University. He has published and lectured widely on William Faulkner and Eudora Welty and other Southern literary figures. Books include Outside the Southern Myth, Children of the Dark House, Eudora Welty - A Bibliography of her Work. Most recently he has published a collection of essays entitled Faulkner and Welty and the Southern Literary Tradition. He has also edited all of Faulkner's novels for Random House, The Library of America, and Vintage International. In 2006 he was awarded the Richard Wright Literary Excellence Award (Past Wright honorees include Eudora Welty, Ellen Douglas, Willie Morris, Shelby Foote, Elizabeth Spencer, Barry Hannah, John Grisham, Bill Minor).
PROFESSOR NOEL POLK, MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY (USA), session chair, is Emeritus Professor of English and Editor of The Mississippi Quarterly at Mississippi State University. He has published and lectured widely on William Faulkner and Eudora Welty and other Southern literary figures. Books include Outside the Southern Myth, Children of the Dark House, Eudora Welty - A Bibliography of her Work. Most recently he has published a collection of essays entitled Faulkner and Welty and the Southern Literary Tradition. He has also edited all of Faulkner's novels for Random House, The Library of America, and Vintage International. In 2006 he was awarded the Richard Wright Literary Excellence Award (Past Wright honorees include Eudora Welty, Ellen Douglas, Willie Morris, Shelby Foote, Elizabeth Spencer, Barry Hannah, John Grisham, Bill Minor).
PROFESSOR ESTHER SÁNCHEZ-PARDO, UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID (SPAIN) “Resistance, Confession, Resignification: Richard Wright’s The Man who Lived Underground.” Esther Sánchez-Pardo is Associate Professor of English at Complutense University in Madrid (Spain). She works on Modernism in a comparative framework and is interested in the intersection of literature, psychoanalysis and the visual arts. She is coauthor of Ophelia’s Legacy. Schizotexts in Twentieth Century Women’s Literature (2000) and has coedited Women, Identities and Poetry (1999) and Feeling the Worlds (2001). She has published Cultures of the Death Drive - Melanie Klein and Modernist Melancholia, Duke U.P., 2003. Forthcoming is her critical bilingual anthology of the poetry of Mina Loy (2008) and an edited book on W.H. Auden (in preparation).
DR. SOPHIA EMMANOUILIDOU, GREEK MINISTRY OF EDUCATION (GREECE), “Liminalities of Space and Identity: Self-Conceptualization in Richard Wright’s ‘Rite of Passage’ and ‘The Man who Lived Underground’”. Dr. Emmanouilidou received her B.A. in English Language and Literature from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. In 1996 she commenced a two-year graduate course on American Literature and Culture at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and upon completion of her M.A. she was awarded a prize of academic excellence by the Department of American Studies, and she received her Doctorate with distinctions in September 2003. Between June and August 2001, she carried out library research at the University of Texas, Austin, under the supervision of Dr. José Limon, on a project wholly funded by the Fulbright Foundation. She has published widely and lectured at the University of the Aegean, Department of Social Anthropology and History, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Department of American Studies, and the University of Peloponnesus, Department of History, Archaeology and Culture. She presently works for the Greek Ministry of Education, supervising action projects against racism, social discrimination and sexism among students.
PROFESSOR SARITA CANNON, SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY (USA), “Engaging Heads and Hearts: Teaching Richard Wright at the Turn of the 21st Century.” Canon is assistant professor of English at SFSU, and focuses on ethnic American Literatures. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with an A.B. in Literature, and she completed her Ph.D. in English from UC Berkeley. She held a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in American Indian Studies at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign before joining the English Department at San Francisco State University in Fall 2006. Dr. Cannon’s recent publications include an article on Sylvester Long Lance in Representing Minorities: Studies in Literature and Criticism and a piece on Michael Dorris’s novel A Yellow Raft in Blue Water in the Pembroke Journal. She has presented papers at conferences around the world on diverse topics such as Black-Indian subjectivity, Chicana performance art, and representations of Native Americans in popular culture.
LINDA CHAVERS, HARVARD UNIVERSITY (USA) Linda Chavers is a third-year PhD Candidate in the African and African-American Studies Department at Harvard University. Her field is modern and postmodern literature and the themes of violence and self-making. She hails from Washington, D.C and received her B.A. in Cultural Studies from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University in 2004.
PROFESSOR CARLOS BROSSARD, HARVARD UNIVERSITY (USA), “Chicago, The University of Chicago and Richard Wright's Lawd Today.” Carlos Brossard, a graduate of the college, the University of Chicago, received his doctorate from Harvard University. His dissertation was on literacy diffusion before African absolute bondage in Virginia. After teaching at Harvard, Brandeis, Duke, University of North Carolina, and the University of Pittsburgh, he became an independent scholar. He was founding member of the North Carolina Conference on Black Studies (1974), the National Council on Black Studies (1975), and Charles Rivers Polls of Cambridge, MA and Pittsburgh, PA (2000). His publications include intellectual and organizational origins of modern black studies (republished twice since its first publication in 1984), US sociology at Chicago and, recently, methodology and applied social science in African American biography [R. R. Wright, Jr] and black transnational biography [Carlos A. Lewis of Panama, Mississippi and Rome]. He is now working on misrepresentations of biographies of Richard Wright. He is board member, Arts Without Borders (http://www.artwb.org/), Boston, MA.
PROFESSOR ANA MARIA FRAILE, UNIVERSITY OF SALAMANCA, “Reading Native Son in the Context of the (African) American Jeremiad and American Exceptionalism.”
Ana María Fraile-Marcos is Associate Professor of English at the University of Salamanca, Spain. Her current research involves the interconnections between African Canadian and African American literatures. She is the editor of Richard Wright’s Native Son (Rodopi 2007). Other recent publications include the book Planteamientos estéticos y políticos en la obra de Zora Neale Hurston (2003); chapters about Hurston, Gayl Jones, Alice Walker and Joy Kogawa in the Rodopi series; Perspectives on Modern Literature; and articles on Toni Morrison, Makeda Silvera, Ondaatje, Kogawa, Blaise and Mukherjee, in journals such asMELUS, Open Letter, and Atlantis. She is the editor of bilingual (English/Spanish) editions on the works of Jacob A. Riis, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston.
PROFESSOR MARTHA SATZ, SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY (USA), “Retaining All the Jewels of the Soul - The Ongoing Dialogue Between Protest and Affirmation.” Martha Satz , an assistant professor of English at Southern Methodist University, has exploited her dual academic background in philosophy and literature to publish a wide diversity of essays. She contributed to the Modern Language Association volume on Approaches to Teaching Richard Wright’s Native Son and writes about canonical authors such as Kafka and Jane Austen as well as issues of adoption and race and genetics and disability. She is currently at work on a book-length manuscript about adoption, literature, race, and culture.
PROFESSOR JONATHAN A. AUSTAD, CHADRON STATE COLLEGE (USA), “To the Left of Wright: The Manifesto of the Communist Party’s Influence on Richard Wright¹s Native Son.” An assistant professor of humanities at Chadron State College, where he has taught since 2005. His recent research interests included: connections between Dadaism and Hemingway, Dadaism and 1920s literature, and ideological social constructions in traditional Hollywood Cinema.
PROFESSOR KALENDA EATON, PROFESSOR KALENDA EATON, ARMSTRONG ATLANTIC STATE UNIVERSITY (USA), "Jumping up to get Beat Down? Reflections on the Perils of Black Progress in Richard Wright's 12 Million Black Voices and Black Power". Kalenda Eaton is an Assistant Professor of English at Armstrong Atlantic State University (Savannah, Georgia, USA). Her recent book titled: Womanism, Literature, and the Transformation of the Black Community, 1965-1980 (Routledge, 2007) examines fictional representations of activism in post-Civil Rights Black communities. Dr. Eaton’s teaching experience and research include Literature of the African Diaspora, Women’s Studies, and Literary Theory.
PROFESSOR JAMES PETERSON, BUCKNELL UNIVERSITY (USA) “Native Sons and the Roots of Rage: Discerning the Bigger Figures in Hip Hop Culture.” James Peterson is an Assistant Professor of English at Bucknell University. He has been a visiting lecturer and preceptor in African American Studies at Princeton University and was the founding Media Coordinator for the Harvard University Hip Hop Archive. He is also the founder of Hip Hop Scholars, LLC, an association of Hip Hop generational scholars dedicated to researching and developing the cultural and educational potential of Hip Hop, urban, and youth cultures. Dr. Peterson has assisted Dr. Cornel West and delivered the “Hip Hop Studies” lectures at Princeton University (2005). He has also assisted and guest-lectured in the (Marvin Gaye and Tupac) courses with Dr. Michael Eric Dyson at the University of Pennsylvania (2005/6). He has written numerous scholarly articles on Hip Hop Culture, African American Literature, Culture, and Linguistics as well as Urban Studies. He is currently working on a book that explores in detail the lyrics and life of Tupac Shakur (forthcoming, Praeger/Greenwood Press). Peterson has conducted interviews with Gil Scott Heron, Dr. Manning Marable, Sistah Souljah, Snoop Dogg, Dead Prez, DJ Jazzy Jeff and generally applies his journalistic skills and his ethnographic training toward innovative academic inquiry. Dr. Peterson has been featured on/in BET and Bet.com (The Jeff Johnson Chronicles), The Michael Eric Dyson Show, Hot 97’s “Street Soldiers,” The Michael Baisden Show, and the award-winning PBS documentary, Beyond Beats and Rhymes. Peterson has appeared on Fox News, CBS News, MSNBC, ABC News, ESPN, and various local television networks as an expert on Hip Hop culture, popular culture, urban youth and politics. He has published in Callaloo, Black Arts Quarterly, XXL, Technitions, and Lexani magazine. He has also been featured and/or quoted in Vibe Magazine, Philadelphia Weekly, Southern Voices and The Wall Street Journal.
PROFESSOR SOSTENE MASSIMO ZANGARI, UNIVERSITÀ DI MILANO (ITALY), “Modernism as language of community: Richard Wright’s Lawd Today.” Sostene Massimo Zangari has recently completed a Ph. D. program in English at the University of Milan, Italy. He has worked extensively on Herman Melville and Jewish American Literature. His dissertation, entitled “The Jew as A Modern Writer: Assimilation and the Jewish American Novel,” deals with the problematic relationships of Jewish writers with the American novel, and outlines a path of stylistic and thematic appropriation from early immigrant writers to Henry Roth. He is currently working as Teaching Assistant at the Department of English, University of Milan, Italy.
PROFESSOR GRAHAM BARNFIELD, UNIVERSITY OF EAST LONDON (UK), "American Structure: Richard Wright, Pulp Publishing and Federal One." Graham Barnfield Ph.D. heads the Journalism programme at the University of East London. He is co-editor of "Facing the Future After Richard Wright", a special section of Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture 8.4 (https://exchange.ubi.pt/owa/redir.aspx?C=848e6608fde6421fa8bf73db8ef6fd76&URL=http%3a%2f%2freconstruction.eserver.org%2f084%2fcontents084.shtml%238.1) and a Fellow of the Wolfsonian-FIU.
PROFESSOR MARIA LUÍSA BRANCO, UNIVERSIDADE DA BEIRA INTERIOR (PORTUGAL): “Towards a Pedagogical Reading of Richard Wright’s Autobiographical Black Boy”. Maria Luísa Branco is Assistant Professor at the Psychology and Education Department and a researcher at the Institute for Practical Philosophy at UBI. One of her main current research interests is the analysis of narrative from a perspective of education toward citizenship and intercultural education (particularly in the context of autobiographies).
PROFESSOR ARTHUR EDGAR E. SMITH, UNIVERSITY OF SIERRA LEONE (SIERRA LEONE) Arthur Edgar E. Smith (M. A in African Literature from Fourah Bay College) is Senior Lecturer of English at Fourah Bay College lecturing English and American Literature for the past eight years. Mr Smith's writings have appeared in various journals and internet sites .He participated as a Fullbright scholar in a seminar on contemporary American Literature in the U.S. in 2006 and was named Honorary Citizen Louisville. His over 100 articles published on African and American literature have been on Langston Hughes, Phillis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano and Amiri Baraka amongst others. He was a delegate to the 73rd International PEN International Congress in Dakar, Senegal 2007.
VAUGHN RASBERRY is an advanced doctoral candidate in the department of English at the University of Chicago, where he is completing a dissertation titled, "In the Twilight of Jim Crow: African American Literary Culture and the Cold War." Presently he is a graduate research fellow at Willamette University, and will soon commence a Fulbright Junior Lecturer award in the department of American Studies at the Humboldt University-Berlin.
