So, I am getting excited to be on an AWP Panel at long last– I’ve only applied and been rejected ten or twelve times, but thanks to Jenny Liou, this year “Derrida on the Rez: Teaching Nontraditional Texts to Nontraditional Students,” is happening Friday afternoon in DC February 10th. Ta Nehisi-Coates’ memoir, Thomas Jefferson, Langston Hughes, Emma Lazarus, the SPLC Reports, and responses to the two blackface incidents here at the University of Oregon analyzed and discussed by fall quarter freshman of color as the election outcome became clear. The force of pathos and the epistolary form: rhetoric, stake, ethical imperative (Dear younger sister, Dear brother, Dear mother, Dear child of mine to come…recently, here in America, the land which claims to offer the dream of equal opportunity, justice, and freedom…). What it means to teach and write to such students, and to bear the responsibility of asking them to speak their truth. What their voices mean, and how they let me belong, for just a moment, in the America that could be. And that’s the little thing I have to say, while my fellow panelists look absolutely incredible (Jenny, Charles Hood, Vernon Ng). I hope y’all headed to DC this year will come join me!
(posted from Facebook)
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