Conference Schedule

Thursday, March 21

1:00 pm: Founders Room, Alumni Center
Welcome to conference:

- Prof. Terrence McDonald, Dean, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
- Prof. Paula Rabinowitz, University of Minnesota

1:15-3:15 (Panel A)
Reading the Old Left Now

- Chair: Robbie Lieberman, SIU-Carbondale
- Julia Mickenberg, University of Texas, "U.S. Women, the Pilgrimage to Russia, and the Question of Stalinism"
- Sarah Ehlers, University of South Dakota, "Left of Lyric: Depression-era Poetry and Collective Life"
- Keith Gilyard, Pennsylvania State University, "John Henry in the Work of John Oliver Killens"
- Heather Bowen-Struyk, University of Michigan, "The Resurgence of Proletarian Literature in Japan in 2008"

4:00 (Keynote address)
- Introduction of Michael Löwy: Howard Brick, University of Michigan
- Michael Löwy, Research Director emeritus, CNRS, Paris:"Jewish Radicals in Central Europe and the US: A Comparative Approach"

5:30-6:30: (Reception) Alumni Center Lobby

 

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Friday, March 22

Forum Auditorium, Palmer Commons
9:00-11:30 (Panel B)
New Visions of Literary Biography

- 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 World War II"
- Dayo F. Gore, University of California-San Diego, " 'A Black Woman Speaks...': Beulah Richardson's Life of Protest and Poetry" - Rachel Rubin, U-Mass Boston, "The Darker Brother and the Cracker Boy: Langston Hughes, Don West, and Poetry as Social Conversation"
- Bill Mullen, Purdue University, "W.E.B. Du Bois and Socialism: A Call for Reassessment"
- Marcial Gonzalez, UC-Berkeley, "Communism of the Will: Narrative Disclosures of a Mexican American Farm Worker"

12:30-2:45 (Panel C)
Toward an Activist, Internationalist American Studies

- 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, "Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture 25 Years Later: Stalinism and the 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"

3:00-4:30 (Keynote address)

- Introduction of Tariq Ali: Michael Löwy
- Tariq Ali, "The Mirror of the World: Poetry and Resistance"

4:30-4:45 (Conclusion)

- Introduction of Alan Wald: Konstantina M. Karageorgos, University of Michigan
- Alan Wald, The Present of Future Things


For further information, contact Howard Brick (hbrick@umich.edu)