The independent newspaper of the University of Iowa community since 1868

The Daily Iowan

The independent newspaper of the University of Iowa community since 1868

The Daily Iowan

The independent newspaper of the University of Iowa community since 1868

The Daily Iowan

Guest Opinion: ‘Transitions and Transgressions’ conference comes to the UI

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This upcoming weekend marks the 17th-Annual Craft Critique Culture Conference. Graduate student organizers Enrico Bruno, Faith Avery, and Diann Rozsa have planned an especially engaging conference this year, with the theme “Transitions & Transgressions.” As always, the conference is interdisciplinary, with presenters coming from a variety of fields — ranging from literary studies to digital humanities to nonfiction writing. Importantly, this year’s conference grapples with racial politics, violence, and gender in meaningful ways.
Panels will begin on Friday at 9 a.m. and continue on Saturday. All events will take place in EPB. Panel highlights include Friday’s “Writing Transitions in Economies of Race and Place,” with presentations by Jaclyn Carver, Caitlin Simmons, and Ian Faith, and Saturday’s intriguing panel called “Speculative Structures: Negotiating Genre in Women’s Writing,” highlighting the work of E. Mariah Spencer, Laura Meli, and Angela Toscano. This year’s conference also features an Undergraduate Honors Panel.

Professor Richard Turner, a scholar in African American Religious History at the University of Iowa, will deliver a plenary speech titled “Jazz, the Second Line, and African-American Religious Nationalism in New Orleans” on Friday at 1 p.m. in 304 EPB.

Michael Awkward, the Gayl A. Jones Collegiate Professor of Afro-American Literature and Culture at University of Michigan, will give a keynote talk at 4 p.m. Friday in 304 EPB titled “ ‘why it can’t stay dead’: Race, Re-Presentation, and the ‘Open Casket’ of Emmett Till,” which investigates why black American pain is positioned as a phenomenon that requires vigilant protection. Intersectional Feminist scholars will know Awkward’s early work on Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston, while scholars of African American Literature and American Literature and Culture broadly will certainly recognize Awkward’s influence and contributions in current scholarship. Awkward’s participation in the conference is truly an exciting and important event for UI students and faculty alike.

Overall, the 2017 conference promises to be thought-provoking, engaging, and on the cutting edge of new scholarship in numerous fields. For more information, check the conference website.

Corey 

Hickner-Johnson 

UI doctoral candidate in English and a graduate instructor in English

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