Department of English
- Friday, October 18, 2019 - 10:00am to 7:00pm
Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA)
118 S 36th St, Philadelphia
The year 2019 marks the quadricentennial of a momentous event in American history: the arrival of “20 and odd” enslaved Africans in 1619 at Point Comfort, Virginia Colony. This event and its attendant histories would alter the course and character of not only the United States, but also the modern world. The Legacy of 1619: The 2019 Callaloo Conference is an occasion to commemorate this world-historical event and moreover bring to bear the great advances made in African Diaspora literary, visual, and cultural studies to understand the significance of 1619 and its continued reverberations; to raise questions that remain particularly germane in our present: How do the political, economic, and cultural circumstances of Virginia Colony in 1619 speak to us in twenty-first century America? And the voices of those “20 and odd” Africans, what might they say to us now? From the vantage point of 1619, and our own time four centuries later, how do we envision another calculus of being in the world? The Legacy of 1619: The 2019 Callaloo Conference provides a timely occasion to engage and extend these questions.
10:00 AM-11:30 AM Dissident Genealogies
Speakers
Salamishah Tillet, Rutgers University, Newark
Joyce Ann Joyce, Temple University
Marlon Ross, University of Virginia
Respondents
Julius Fleming, Jr., University of Maryland
Jackson Brown, University of Texas, Austin
Moderator
Kenton Butcher, University of Pennsylvania
11:45 AM-1:15 PM 2019
Speakers
GerShun Avilez, University of Maryland, College Park
Margo Crawford, University of Pennsylvania
Soyica Colbert, Georgetown University
Robert Reid-Pharr, Harvard University
Respondents
Joshua Bennett, Dartmouth College
I. Augustus Durham, University of Maryland, College Park
Moderator
Mayowa Ajibade, University of Pennsylvania
3:00 PM-4:30 PM Keynote conversation: 1619/2019
Speakers
L.H. Stallings, Georgetown University
Kevin Quashie, Brown University
Moderators
Margo Crawford, University of Pennsylvania
5:00 PM-7:00 PM Readings
Speakers
Herman Beavers, University of Pennsylvania
Dagmawi Woubshet, University of Pennsylvania
Ishion Hutchinson, Cornell University
Airea D. Matthews, Bryn Mawr College
Moderator
Elias Rodriques, University of Pennsylvania
Sponsors
The Legacy of 1619 has been made possible by the generous support of the Department of English and the following co-sponsors: Center for Africana Studies; Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing; Institute of Contemporary Art; Wolf Humanities Center; History of Art Department; Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies; Department of Africana Studies; University Research Foundation Grant; School of Arts and Sciences Conference Support Grant; Provost’s Excellence through Diversity Fund; African American Museum in Philadelphia; and Professors Margo Crawford, Al Filreis, and Dagmawi Woubshet.