News & Events

Friday, March 22: Forum Auditorium, Palmer Commons

9:00-11:00 (Panel B)

New Visions of Literary Biography[9:00-11:00]

Chair: Rachel Peterson, Grand Valley State University

• Lawrence Jackson, Emory University, "Chester Himes, Fannie Cook and Bucklin Moon: American Novelists and the Edge of the Racial Frontier during WWII"
• Bill Mullen, Purdue University, "W.E.B. Du Bois and Socialism: A Call for Reassessment"
• Rachel Rubin, U-Mass Boston, "The Darker Brother and the Cracker Boy: Langston Hughes, Don West, and Poetry as Social Conversation"
• Marcial Gonzalez, UC-Berkeley, “Communism of the Will: Narrative Disclosures of a Mexican American Farm Worker”

11:15-1:15 (Panel C)

Toward an Activist, Internationalist American Studies[2:30-4:30]

Chair: Nathaniel Mills, California State University-Northridge

• Eleni Varikas, Professor Emerita, CNRS, Paris, “Travelling Theories and Practices of Resistance within a Neo-Colonial Europe: For a Feminism in the Plural”
• Cary Nelson, University of Illinois, “The Unknown Native American Left”
• Sarah Wald, Drew University, "Ecocritical Perspectives on the Mid-20th Century US Left."
• Cheryl Higashida, University of Colorado, "Black Belt Queer Feminism: African American Women Writers on the Left in the Era of Decolonization"

1:15-2:30(Lunch break)

2:30-4:00 (Keynote address)

Introduction of Tariq Ali: Michael Löwy

Tariq Ali, “The Mirror of the World: Poetry and Resistance”

4:00-4:30 (Conclusion)

Introduction of Alan Wald: Paula Rabinowitz, University of Minnesota

Remarks by Alan Wald

Lineages of the Literary Left (March 21-22, University of Michigan)

Current Sponsors:

Department of English, Department of American Culture (with the participation of Native American Studies, Latina/o Studies, and Asian/Pacific Islander Studies), Rackham Dean’s Discretionary Fund, Office of the Vice President for Research, Institute for the Humanities, International Institute, Office of the Provost, Frankel Center, Labadie Collection, Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, German Department, History Department, Center for South Asian Studies, Modern Greek program, Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, U.S. Literatures and Cultures Consortium, Interdisciplinary Marx and Post-Structuralism Group, Department of Romance Languages