|
Books
by Michele Valerie Ronnick
Cicero's "Paradoxa Stoicorum"/
The
Autobiography of William Sanders Scarborough /
The Works of William Sanders Scarborough
*
* * * *
Classical Association of the Middle
West and South (CAMWS)
is holding its annual meeting in
Oklahoma City
at the invitation
of Oklahoma University from March 23rd to 26th.
Practice and Perception of Black Classicism, Part I and
Part II
This year
Michele Valerie Ronnick is president of CAMWS and
she willl present some of her findings in her
presidential address, which will be an original
lecture entitled "Black Classicism: 'Tell Them We Are
Rising'." She plans to include a good deal of history in
Oklahoma before moving to other events/people in Georgia
(Oklahomans to be mentioned: Inman Page, Ralph Ellison,
John Hope Franklin, Melvin B. Tolson, Margaret
Wade-Lewis, Monroe Work. Georgians: John Hope, William
Henry Crogman,
William Sanders Scarborough, John Wesley Gilbert,
Fletcher H. Henderson Sr., R. R. Wright, Sr., his family
and his grand-daughter, Ruth).
In addition the Nigerian classicist
Dr. James Eezzuduemhoi and his daughter Dr. Deborah
Eezzuduemhoi will be at our meeting and at the banquet.
The program for the
conference is up on the web. It is divided into days,
and so you'll find the panels on black classicism listed
on Friday.
http://www.camws.org/meeting/2010/index.html
On Friday in Meacham on O.U.'s
campus there will be 2 panels (7 papers total) entitled
"Practice and Perception of Black Classicism, Part I and
Part II." The titles and presenters are described below.
Presidential Panel I
1:15 p.m. -2:45 p.m. (Meacham)
Practice and Perception of Black Classicism: Chavis,
Tolson and Eezzuduemhoi
1. John Chavis, African American Latin Teacher in the
Antebellum South.
John H. Starks, Jr. (Binghamton University,
State University of New York )
2. The Pindar of Harlem: the Life and Work of Melvin B.
Tolson (1898-1966).
James H. Tatum (Dartmouth College)
3. An African-US Collaboration on a New Elementary Text
for Ancient Greek.
Glenn Storey (University of Iowa)
4. Response by
Catherine A. John (University of Oklahoma)
* *
* * *
The first professional classicist of
African American descent, William Sanders
Scarborough (1852-1926) rose from slavery to
become president of Wilberforce University
in Ohio. Excelling at Latin and Greek, he
crossed the color line both socially and
intellectually with his entry into a field
of study commonly seen as elitist and
dominated by white men. Although unknown to
classicists today, Scarborough had a
distinguished career in the field and held
membership in many learned societies and had
an active publication record. His life as an
engaged intellectual, public citizen, and
concerned educator was admired and emulated
by W. E. B. Du Bois.
This collection, which spans a half a century from the
end of Reconstruction through the vagaries of World War
I and the rise of Jim Crow, gives us a window we have
not had before into the challenges and ambiguities of
this period. As a committed intellectual, concerned
educator and loyal citizen, he served as an ambassador
to and for his race to several generations of people
both in the U.S. and abroad. In Scarborough's writings
we have a portrait of a man whose struggle for physical
and intellectual freedom can inform us all. |
 |
* *
* * *
Presidential Panel II
3:00- 5:00 p.m.
(Meacham)
Practice and Perception of Black Classicism:
Representations of Race in Films and Television about
the Ancient World
1. Magic, Music and Race: The Black Orpheus Effect.
Monica S. Cyrino (University of New Mexico)
2. The Defiant Ones: Black and White in the Arena.
Martin M. Winkler (George Mason University)
3. Fade to Black: Reflections of Race in Film and
Television Versions of the Cleopatra Legend.
Gregory N. Daugherty (Randolph- Macon College)
4. From Black Caesar to Freedom Writers: The Black
Experience via Greco-Roman Allusions in Popular Cinema.
Jon Solomon (University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign)
5. Response by
Catherine A. John (University of Oklahoma)
* *
* * *
 |
There is a new book entitled
African American Writers and Classical
Tradition by William W. Cook and
James H. Tatum (University of
Chicago Press, 2010)
Constraints on freedom, education, and
individual dignity have always been
fundamental in determining who is able to
write, when, and where. Taking the singular
instance of the African American writer to
heart, William W. Cook and James Tatum here
argue that African American literature did
not develop apart from canonical Western
literary traditions but instead grew out of
those literatures, even as it adapted and
transformed the cultural traditions and
religions of Africa and the African diaspora
along the way. |
Tracing the
interaction between African American writers and the
literatures of ancient Greece and Rome, from the time of
slavery and its aftermath to the civil rights era
through the present, the authors offer a sustained and
lively discussion of the life and work of Phillis
Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and Rita
Dove, among other highly acclaimed poets, novelists, and
scholars. Assembling this brilliant and diverse group of
African American writers at a moment when our reception
of classical literature is ripe for change, the authors
paint an unforgettable portrait of our own reception of
“classic” writing, especially as it was inflected by
American racial politics.
posted 10 March 2010
* * *
* *
* * *
* *
Life on Mars
By Tracy K. Smith
Tracy K. Smith, author of Life on Mars has been selected as the winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. In its review of the book, Publishers Weekly noted the collection's "lyric brilliance" and "political impulses [that] never falter." A New York Times review stated, "Smith is quick to suggest that the important thing is not to discover whether or not we're alone in the universe; it's to accept—or at least endure—the universe's mystery. . . . Religion, science, art: we turn to them for answers, but the questions persist, especially in times of grief. Smith's pairing of the philosophically minded poems in the book’s first section with the long elegy for her father in the second is brilliant." Life on Mars follows Smith's 2007 collection, Duende, which won the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, the only award for poetry in the United States given to support a poet's second book, and the first Essence Literary Award for poetry, which recognizes the literary achievements of African Americans.
|
 |
The Body’s Question (2003) was her first published collection. Smith said Life on Mars, published by small Minnesota press Graywolf, was inspired in part by her father, who was an engineer on the Hubble space telescope and died in 2008.
* *
* * *
 |
Allah, Liberty, and Love
The Courage to Reconcile Faith and Freedom
By Irshad Manji
In Allah, Liberty and Love, Irshad Manji paves a path for Muslims and non-Muslims to transcend the fears that stop so many of us from living with honest-to-God integrity: the fear of offending others in a multicultural world as well as the fear of questioning our own communities. Since publishing her international bestseller, The Trouble with Islam Today, Manji has moved from anger to aspiration. She shows how any of us can reconcile faith with freedom and thus discover the Allah of liberty and love—the universal God that loves us enough to give us choices and the capacity to make them. Among the most visible Muslim reformers of our era, Manji draws on her experience in the trenches to share stories that are deeply poignant, frequently funny and always revealing about these morally confused times. What prevents young Muslims, even in the West, from expressing their need for religious reinterpretation? |
* *
* * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* *
* * *
ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
update 17 May 2012
|
