Celebrating the Life and Work of Winston Napier

Evolutionary Momentum in African American Studies:

Legacy and Future Directions

Clark University (Worcester, MA), Dana Commons 2^nd floor

Friday, February 27

4:30 Registration Opens

5:00-6:00 Welcome Reception

“Paul Buono Jazz Trio”

6:15-7:15 Buffet Supper

7:30-8:45 Presentations by Students of Professor Winston Napier

William Cobb (Clark BA ‘08):

Mark Duhaime (Clark Senior ‘09):

Pamela Taylor (Clark BA ‘08):

Tracy Walsh (Clark BA ‘07):

Respondent: Magdalena Rabidou (Clark BA ‘08)

Saturday, February 28

9:00 Registration and Continental Breakfast

9:15 Welcome

9:30-10:45 Transnational Influences of African American Culture

§ Barry Gaspar (Duke University): “Atlantic Subjects: Countering Enslavement in the Early 1700s”

§ Allison Blakely (Boston University): “The Influence of Afro-America on Emerging Afro-Europe”

§ R. Victoria Arana (Howard University): “Winston Napier’s Bridge ‘across the Pond’: Theorizing Black British Authority”

11:00-12:00 Keynote Address

§ Karla FC Holloway (Duke University): "Home Invasions--A Narrative Ethic of Race and Privacy"

12:00-1:30 Conference Luncheon

1:45-3:00 Rethinking Black Aesthetics

§ Ousmane Power-Greene (Clark University): “The Disorder of Things: The Literary Criticism and Theory of Hubert H. Harrison”

§ Jarrett Brown (Bowdoin College): “The Maroon Intellectual: Reading Claude McKay’s Correspondences”

§ Carol Bailey (Amherst College): “Centering the Back-ups: Revisiting the Performative in Kate Rushin's Poetry"

§ James Smethurst (University of Massachusetts-Amherst): “Live a Change: The Legacy of Black Arts in the Age of Obama”

3:15-4:30 Mediating Black Identities: Newspapers, Photography, Literary

Magazines, and More

§ Amritjit Singh (Ohio University): “’Elephant’s Dance’: Wallace Thurman the Instigator and Public Intellectual of the Harlem Renaissance”

§ Daniel Scott, III (Rhode Island College): “Image and Community in the Pages of Atlanta Daily World”

§ Kate Capshaw Smith (University of Connecticut-Storrs): “Photography, Civil Rights, and African American Childhood”

§ Ayesha Hardison (Ohio University): “Reading and Redefining Womanhood in Maud Martha”

4:30-5:30 “These—Are—the "Breaks”: A Roundtable Discussion on

Teaching the Post-Soul Aesthetic

§ Mark Anthony Neal (Duke University)

§ Crystal Anderson (Elon University)

§ Bert Ashe (University of Richmond)

Download the conference registration form here, or contact Shirley Riopel Nelson at 508.793.7142 or napierconference@clarku.edu; conference fee $25 ($5 for students).

Sponsored by the Higgins School of Humanities, the Office of the President, the Office of the Provost, and the Department of English