Middle Passages: Histories and Poetics

The Middle Passage has long been a trope for unspeakable terror. But a recent generation of scholars has been keen on discerning how the Middle Passage as social experience defined lives, histories and contemporary social selves. Middle Passages: Histories & Poetics brings together some of the most prominent writers on the subject to present papers and participate in discussion.

May 6-7, 2010 at the Graduate Center, CUNY

365 Fifth Avenue, New York City
Conference Schedule:
THURSDAY, MAY 6TH
11:30 – 12:00
Introduction & Opening Remarks
Herman L. Bennett
CUNY Graduate Center
Segal Theater

12:00 – 1:30
Keynote: Eve Trout Powell
University of Pennsylvania
“Huda and Halide and the Slaves at Bedtime: Egyptian and Ottoman Feminist Leaders and the Memory of Slavery in the mid-20th Century”
2:00 – 3:30
Seminar: James Sweet
University of Wisconsin
Comment: Gary Wilder
CUNY Graduate Center
4:00 – 5:30
Seminar: Stephanie E. Smallwood
University of Washington, Seattle
Comment: Michael Ralph
New York University
6:00 – 7:30
Seminar: Vincent Brown
Harvard University
Comment: Julie Livingston
Rutgers University
FRIDAY, MAY 7TH
11:00 – 12:30
Seminar: Yvette T. Christiansë
Fordham University
Comment: Christopher L. Brown
Columbia University
2:00 – 3:30
Seminar: Edlie L. Wong
Rutgers University
Comment: Carroll Smith-Rosenberg
University of Michigan
4:00 – 5:30
Keynote: Saidiya V. Hartman
Columbia University
“Dispossession: A Poetics”
Free and open to the public, but registration is required. For registration and access to pre‐circulated readings, please visit www.centerforthehumanitiesgc.org/seminars.

Social Text Collective

The Social Text Collective began in 1979.