Presented By: The College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Lineages of the Literary Left
A Symposium in Honor of Alan M. Wald
This two-day conference honors Alan M. Wald, H. Chandler Davis Collegiate Professor of English and American Culture, on the occasion of his retirement from teaching at the University of Michigan after 38 years on the faculty. The event celebrates Professor Wald's contributions to expanding the scope of U.S. literary studies and building American Culture at Michigan. Distinguished guest speakers will present new scholarship regarding literature and leftwing political movements worldwide.
Alan Wald is the world's leading authority on the relation between 20th-century U.S. literature and radical left-wing political movements. His books and articles have illuminated the creative lives of figures such as James T. Farrell, Langston Hughes, Muriel Rukeyser, Philip Rahv, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Arthur Miller--and have brought attention to unduly neglected writers such as Ann Petry, Jo Sinclair, Carlos Bulosan, and Joy Davidman. These are just a handful of the writers who figure in Wald's magisterial studies in modern American culture.
Friday, March 22
Forum Hall, 4th Floor, Palmer Commons
9:00-11:30 (Panel B)
NEW VISIONS OF LITERARY BIOGRAPHY
”¢ 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
”¢ 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”
Ӣ 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)
TARIQ ALI, activist, historical novelist (The Islamic Quintet), and editorial board member, New Left Review, London:
“The Mirror of the World: Poetry and Resistance”
4:30-4:45 (Conclusion)
ALAN WALD, “The Future of Present Things”
Alan Wald is the world's leading authority on the relation between 20th-century U.S. literature and radical left-wing political movements. His books and articles have illuminated the creative lives of figures such as James T. Farrell, Langston Hughes, Muriel Rukeyser, Philip Rahv, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Arthur Miller--and have brought attention to unduly neglected writers such as Ann Petry, Jo Sinclair, Carlos Bulosan, and Joy Davidman. These are just a handful of the writers who figure in Wald's magisterial studies in modern American culture.
Friday, March 22
Forum Hall, 4th Floor, Palmer Commons
9:00-11:30 (Panel B)
NEW VISIONS OF LITERARY BIOGRAPHY
”¢ 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
”¢ 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”
Ӣ 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)
TARIQ ALI, activist, historical novelist (The Islamic Quintet), and editorial board member, New Left Review, London:
“The Mirror of the World: Poetry and Resistance”
4:30-4:45 (Conclusion)
ALAN WALD, “The Future of Present Things”
Related Links
Co-Sponsored By
- Institute for Research on Women and Gender
- Judaic Studies
- Comparative Literature
- Institute for the Humanities
- Department of Afroamerican and African Studies
- University Library
- Rackham Graduate School
- Department of Middle East Studies
- International Institute
- OVPR
- Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies
- Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies Program
- Bentley Historical Library
- Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies
- Women of Color in the Academy Project
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