UPDATE: Diversity in African American Poetry (4/18/03; 9/18/03-9/21/03)

[please note the addition of several scheduled readers/speakers and
recommended topics]

Call for Papers and Panel Proposals

Marjorie Cook Poetry Festival & Conference
September 18-21, 2003
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio

In conjunction with the Marjorie Cook Poetry Festival of readings by
nationally prominent African American poets, Miami University's
creative writing program will host a conference on "Diversity in
African American Poetry."

Plenary address by:

=85 Lorenzo Thomas

Scheduled readers/speakers include:

=85 Elizabeth Alexander
=85 Wanda Coleman
=85 C. S. Giscombe
=85 Terrance Hayes
=85 Nathaniel Mackey
=85 Tracie Morris
=85 Harryette Mullen
=85 Mendi Obadike-Lewis
=85 Claudia Rankine
=85 James Richardson
=85 Sonia Sanchez
=85 Reginald Shepherd
=85 Evie Shockley
=85 Timothy Seibles
=85 Lorenzo Thomas
=85 Natasha Trethewey
=85 Quincy Troupe
=85 Anthony Walton
=85 Crystal Williams
=85 Tyrone Williams

In a recent panel discussion regarding "What's African-American about
African-American Poetry," poet-scholar Harryette Mullen warned: "In
our anxiety to embody or represent authentic black identity, we may
impoverish our cultural heritage and simplify the complexity of our
historical experience. As poets and as people of African descent, we
are in danger of only performing blackness, rather than exploring the
infinite permutations of our lived experience and creative
imagination as black people." Surveying the flourishing poetic
landscape, we conclude that many American poets of African descent
have negotiated such dangers successfully. All of the most visible
schools of contemporary poetic practice include distinguished African
American poets. There are also many successful African American poets
whose work does not fit easily within any of the categories by which
American poetry has been sorted by critics and publicists.

Our conference seeks to explore the complex variety of experiences,
expressions, experiments, and influences represented in "African
American poetry" and thus prevent this overarching category from
obscuring the stylistic diversity of individual artists or imposing
an identity politics upon those who may prefer to define their
writing according to other criteria. Papers and panels that will help
us foster an appreciation of diversity in African American poetry are
welcome.

Planned topics for roundtable discussion by invited poets and scholars inclu=
de:

=85 African American Performance Poetry and the Beat Legacy
=85 Experimentalism in African American Poetry
=85 Formalism in African American Poetry
=85 Uses of Narrative in African American Poetry

We welcome papers and panel proposals on specific schools and
movements, genres and forms, artistic influences, theoretical
approaches, individual African American poets, and related topics
including but not limited to:

=85 the Black Arts movement
=85 the role of anthologies in defining an African American poetry
=85 the influence of jazz, blues, funk, rap, hip-hop, and other musical genr=
es
=85 canonization, marginalization, and recovery
=85 the long African American poem
=85 what's African about American poetry?
=85 "double consciousness" and lyric identity
=85 ideolectical poetry
=85 hypertextual/"new media" poetry
=85 poetry of African diaspora throughout the Americas

Several panel sessions will be devoted to readings by younger
well-published poets. An evening open-mike period will also be
scheduled.

Please submit 15-minute papers, 200-word abstracts, or
3-to-4-presenter panel proposals by Friday, April 18, 2003 to:

DAAP, c/o Andrew Osborn
Department of English
356 Bachelor Hall
Miami University
Oxford, OH 45056
-or-
osbornal_at_muohio.edu

Email submissions are strongly encouraged. Please include the acronym
"DAAP" in your subject line. When convenient, include submitted text
in the body of your message; any attachments should be in rich text
format (.rtf).

=46or a printable registration form and information regarding
accommodations and travel, please visit our webpage at
<http://www.users.muohio.edu/goodmaek/daap>.

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Received on Fri Mar 07 2003 - 18:25:26 EST