I attended two conferences this past weekend, the Toni Morrison conference at Cornell, celebrating 70 years of Morrison's graduating with her M.A. from the institution, and the Frances E.W. Harper conference at Penn State, celebrating the 200th birthday of the great Pennsylvania-based writer-activist.
1. From the Morrison conference, a highlight for me was giving a talk on Toni Morrison (based on my recent article) in the new Toni Morrison Hall on North Campus. I was an undergraduate student at Cornell 1992-1995 and it felt a little surreal to be back. Much is different (the beautiful design of Klarman Hall, grafted onto Goldwin Smith; the new Toni Morrison and Ruth Bader Ginsburg halls), but quite a number of the core buildings on campus are still the same. The A.D. White House, for instance... Collegetown Bagels...
From the conference itself, a few highlights include:
- The screening of a documentary about Morrison's month-long residency at the Louvre in Paris in 2006, "The Foreigner's Home"
- Farah Jasmine Griffin's powerful and graceful keynote address (which got a standing ovation from the audience!). Since seeing the keynote I've been reading more of Griffin's work; I'm three chapters into her 2021 book Read Until You Understand; highly recommend.
- Autumn Womack's keynote about the construction of the Toni Morrison "Sites of Memory" exhibit at Princeton (spring 2023). I saw this exhibit in person when it was up, and enjoyed the chance to learn more about how it was put together.
- Kevin Young's poetry reading Friday evening. I mostly knew Kevin Young as an editor before this conference; now I'm eager to pick up his books of poetry and explore them.
- I had a spirited exchange with a French scholar who was interested in aligning Morrison's Playing in the Dark with Derrida's later writings on race. It seemed like she wanted to align Derrida and Morrison in a way that seemed a little confused; I tried to challenge her to also note the real divergences between them. In my mind, it seems important to think about why we want to link certain authors to concepts in French theory. I do do some of this in my own work, but I try and do it very carefully and for the right reasons. Does X theory concept help us understand Toni Morrison? If not, why are we invested in using it / invoking it?
- My own paper was pretty well received. It was an extract from my recent published article on Morrison.
- Seeing a number of my former professors from the 1990s around, including some who are retired, but at least one who is not. I also enjoyed meeting legendary people I had not met when I was at Cornell as a student, such as Dr. Margaret Washington. We talked about the impact of the tradition of student protest at Cornell, including the 1968 takeover of Willard Straight Hall by the Black Student Union and the 1995 takeover of Day Hall by Latino students. I also got the chance to meet Carol Boyce Davies, who had been at Cornell for many years, but who now teaches at Howard University.
2. The Harper conference at Penn State was beautifully organized and implemented by a pretty impressive group of faculty and staff. After giving my paper at Cornell Saturday morning, I drove down to State College for this second event.
I missed some of the opening panels (since I was at Cornell). But here the highlight for me was definitely the dinner honoring Frances Smith Foster, a pioneering scholar who helped put Frances Harper on the map. I got a chance the next day to chat with Dr. Foster directly for awhile and she was wonderful -- sharp as ever, and very generous and wise.
This conference was a little challenging for me in part because it's in a period (pre-1900 American literature) that is outside my traditional areas of competence. (I got interested in Harper through my Digital Anthology project.) But the enthusiasm and commitment to Harper was very palpable and contagious. There are very few authors who inspire this type of deep moral and intellectual commitment (Toni Morrison, interestingly enough, is another such writer). If I do another Harper event, I'll certainly want to spend some time deepening my knowledge and filling in some of the gaps in what I've read.
One of the exciting new developments in Harper studies was Eric Gardner's recent discovery of a previously unknown speech by Harper, "National Salvation." I'm also very much looking forward to his upcoming book on Harper from Oxford.
It's possible that the paper I wrote for the conference might be published in a collection in the near future (we'll see). My own paper, looking at the pessimistic strain in Harper's poetry, was somewhat controversial, though I enjoyed the challenge of writing it and participating in the discussion.
Overall, this second conference was both inspiring and humbling.