Event Host: Department of English
Short Description: In our efforts to highlight the role that the humanities plays (or might play) in supporting diversity, promoting equity and responding to social injustices, racial violence against black communities chief among them, the Department of English will present a series of events under the rubric Black Lives/Writers Matter.
In our efforts to highlight the role that the humanities plays (or might play) in supporting diversity, promoting equity and responding to social injustices, racial violence against black communities chief among them, the Department of English will present a series of events under the rubric Black Lives/Writers Matter.
This event is free and open to the public. Please register for the lunch on April 4.
Schedule of Events
April 4
9-9:10 a.m. Light Breakfast/Introduction Wendy Hesford, Professor & Vice Chair
9:10-9:30 a.m. Welcome: Embodied Practices of Belonging Koritha Mitchell, Associate Professor
9:30-9:45 a.m. Dance: “I Can’t Move” Ebony Bailey, PhD English Student
9:45-11 a.m. Panel 1: Protest Poetry & Literary Activism Chris Morris, MFA Creative Writing Student Marcus Jackson, Visiting Assistant Professor
11:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Panel 2: Countering the Violence of Civility & the State: Interracial Solidarities & Black Futures in Colorblind, Post-Racial Times Krupal Amin, PhD English Student Fetishized Writing: The White Boy Shuffle & Writers of Color; Toni Calbert, PhD English Student Lessons Learned at the End of the World: Octavia Bulter’s Parable Series & #BlackLivesMatter; Lynn Itagaki, Associate Professor #BlackLivesMatter, Post-Racial Logics, and the Return of the Culture Wars; Joe Ponce, Associate Professor Interracial Solidarities and Tensions in Student Activism, Then and Now
12:30-1:45 p.m. Lunch/Table Topics Pranav Jani, Associate Professor
1:45-3 p.m. Panel 3: Black Lives/Writers Matter in the Composition Classroom Beverly Moss, Associate Professor Black Literate Lives Matter: A Service Learning Approach; Mike Blancato, PhD English Student Composing Social Causes: Using Black Lives Matter to Demonstrate Rhetorical Situations and Appeals; Sherita Roundtree, PhD English Student Pedagogies of Noise: Teaching Black Writers, Resistance, and Activism; Pritha Prasad Anti-Racist Approaches to Teaching Rhetorical Analysis in First Year Composition
3-4 p.m. Panel 4: What Popular Culture Can Teach Us About Contemporary Race Relations Jacinta Yanders, PhD English Student; Clarence Johnson, Undergraduate English Student Morgyn Cooper, Undergraduate English Alumna
4-4:15 p.m. Open Discussion/Return to Framing Questions
April 5
3-3:15 p.m. Welcome Debra Moddelmog, Professor and Chair
3:15-3:30 p.m. Dance: “I Can’t Move” Ebony Bailey, PhD English Student
3:30-4:45 p.m. Panel 5: Black Girls, Black Women, Black Feminisms Moriah Cheatham, Undergraduate English Alumna “Black Girls Rock and It’s Okay!”; Dianna Molla, Undergraduate English Alumna “Smudging Black Culture”; Chineze Okpalaoka, Undergraduate English Alumna “Combing Through History: Curls for a Cause”; Sarah Ebersole, Undergraduate English Student “The Benefits and Drawbacks of Teaching Young Adult Neo-Slave Narratives”
5-6:15 p.m. Pedagogy Workshop: Race-ing White Straight Curricula facilitated by Mira Kafantaris and Lizzie Nixon, Senior Lecturers
For more information, visit OSU Black Lives Matter in the Classroom (OSUBLMIC).
