In Search of the Lost Child: In Conversation with Caryl Phillips

Caryl Phillips, Writer

When: 6.30pm, Tuesday, 26 May 2015.
Where: Lecture Theatre 002, Business and Law Building, City Campus East, Northumbria University, Newcastle.
Refreshments and a book signing will be available from 5.45pm. 

Free admission, Register for the event
 
SYNOPSIS
Caryl Phillips will read from his latest novel, The Lost Child, in which he re-imagines the origins of one of English literature’s most iconic characters: Emily Brontë’s Heathcliff.

After the reading, Caryl will discuss the inspiration behind his new book and talk about some of the major preoccupations of his fiction and non-fiction, in a conversation led by Dr Clare Elliott and Professor Brian Ward of Northumbria University’s Humanities Department.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Caryl Phillips is one of the most highly acclaimed novelists and essayist of his generation. His numerous fictional and non-fiction works include Dancing in the Dark, Colour Me English, Crossing the River and The Atlantic Sound.

He was awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for his novel, A Distant Shore and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Crossing the River. His many other awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

The Shadow of Selma: Selma and the Voting Rights Act, 1965-2015

The programme for the upcoming conference on Selma and the Voting Rights Act is now available. See the panels and plenary session below, or download the full programme here. The Northumbria University website notes that the American Studies programme will host "its own 'Shadow of Selma' initiative with a major international conference marking the 50th anniversary of the Selma protests and Voting Rights Act of 1965. The conference runs on April 8 and 9 and culminates with a public lecture by celebrated journalist and author Gary Younge at The Sage, Gateshead. Younge’s lecture will also launch the 60th Anniversary Conference of the British Association for American Studies, which is coming to Northumbria for the first time."*

The Shadow of Selma: 

Selma and the Voting Rights Act, 1965-2015

Northumbria University American Studies International Conference

April 8-9 2015
Sponsorship: Northumbria University and the US Embassy, London

WED. 8TH APRIL
City Campus East 1 Room 007

9.00-9.20 Coffee & Tea

9.20-9.30 Introduction from Professor Brian Ward

9.30-11.00: PANEL A: Selma and Grassroots Organisation

Chair: Dr. Ashley Riley Sousa (Middle Tennessee State University)

Dr. Ben Houston (Newcastle University)
“Before the Bridge: Grassroots Activism in Selma”

Professor Alma Billingslea-Brown (Spelman College)
“Selma: Bridge, Boundary and Beyond”

11.00-11.30 Coffee & Tea

11.30–1.00 PANEL B: Selma and Media Coverage

Chair: Dr. Joe Street (Northumbria University)

Mark Walmsley (Leeds University)
“‘They Couldn’t Just Write it the Way it Wasn’t Anymore’: Examining Mainstream Coverage of the 1965 Selma Campaign”

Professor Aniko Bodroghkozy (University of Virginia)
“Mediating Selma: 1965, 2015”

1.00-2.00 Lunch

2.00-4.00 PANEL C: Responses to Selma and the Voting Rights Act

Chair: Dr. Randall Stephens (Northumbria University)

Professor Tony Badger (Northumbria University)
“Backlash or Adjustment? The White South responds to Selma”

Professor Clive Webb (University of Sussex)
“‘We cannot escape the same challenge’: Britain, France and the US Voting Rights Act”

Dr. George Lewis (Leicester University)
“Sidelining Selma’s Segregationists: Memory, Strategy, Ideology and Agency”

7.00 Conference Dinner at Blackfriars Restaurant

THU. 9TH APRIL

9.00-9.30 Coffee & Tea

09.30-11.00 PANEL D: The Supreme Court, Voting Rights, and Economic Citizenship

Chair: Kristine McCusker (Middle Tennessee State University)

J. Douglas Smith (Colburn Music Conservatory)
“The Dirksen Amendment and the Effective Repeal of the Voting Rights Act”

Dr. Lynn Itagaki (Ohio State University)
“Shareholder, Debtor, Voter: Economic Citizenship in the Roberts Court Deregulation of Campaign Finance Reform and The Voting Rights Act”

11.00-11.30 Coffee & Tea

11.30-1.00 PANEL E: Race, Voting, and Wealth in the South Since 1965

Chair: Professor Brian Ward (Northumbria University)

Dr. Devin Fergus (Ohio State University)
"The Third Reconstruction: The Racial Wealth Gap and the Post-Civil Rights US South"

Dr. George Derek Musgrove (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) (co-author with Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Ohio State University)
“The decline of ‘freedom politics’ in the midst of the Second Redemption: black voter mobilization and white voter suppression in the Alabama Black Belt, 1965-2010”

1.00-2.00 Lunch

2.00-3.30 PANEL F: Shelby County vs. Holder (2013) and the South Today

Chair: Dr. Nick Hayward (Northumbria University)

Dr. Barbara Combs (University of Mississippi)
“Purpose Nor Effect: How the Rise of Colorblind Racism Opened the Door For the Supreme Court Decision in Shelby County, Alabama vs. Holder”

Dr. James Hall (Rochester Institute of Technology)
“A Newer New South:  Reading Shelby County v. Holder in Post Racial America”
 
5.00-6.30 Keynote (at the Baltic, with the British Association of American Studies Conference): Gary Younge (The Guardian)

Conference on Selma and the Voting Right Act, 1965-2015

“This act,” proclaimed President Johnson to Congress on August 6, 1965, “flows from a clear and simple wrong. Its only purpose is to right that wrong. Millions of Americans are denied the right to vote because of their color. This law will ensure them the right to vote. The wrong is one which no American, in his heart, can justify. The right is one which no American, true to our principles, can deny.” *

From 8th - 9th April, 2015 Northumbria University’s History and American Studies programmes will host a conference on “Selma and the Voting Right Act, 1965-2015.” 

LBJ signing VR Act, Aug '65. Courtesy of senate.gov.

Where do things stand half a century later? Two years ago Andrew Cohen, contributing editor at the Atlantic, reflected on the law's longer term meaning:

It is undeniable that the Voting Rights Act dramatically sped up the process of preserving and protecting the vote for minority citizens. How much has been achieved? "In some circumstances, minorities register to vote and cast ballots at levels that surpass those of white voters," noted a 2006 House Report which accompanied the act's renewal. But the law was -- and still is today -- a means and not an end. And in the same way that opposition to integration did not immediately end following the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, opposition to minority voting rights did not magically disappear with the enactment of the Voting Rights Act. In many important ways -- right down to the argument that Section 5 is unconstitutional because it treats states unequally -- the conflict has never really gone away.*

Now, 50 years on, many other commentators and scholars are weighing in about the continued significance of the act and wondering if the right to vote is now in jeopardy as it seldom has been since the mid-1960s. (See here, here, and here.)  It is certainly a fitting moment to reflect on the law and its meaning and relevance for the US today. More on the event: 

Northumbria University are gathering together a range of elite scholars whose work probes the impact of the celebrated civil rights campaign in Selma, Alabama, and the passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act by the US Congress. The symposium will feature new assessments of the Selma campaign, the broader struggle for Voting and Citizenship Rights, and the subsequent transformations of southern and US politics. It will bring together scholars in the United States and United Kingdom from multiple disciplines and will spur new international collaborations that will provide original and exciting contributions to African-American and American history.

The conference will begin at 9am on Wednesday, 8 April and the symposium will conclude on Thursday, 9 April with a plenary lecture from the internationally-renowned journalist Gary Younge.

This event both closes the Selma symposium and opens the 60th anniversary conference of the British Association for American Studies (BAAS), which is also being hosted by Northumbria University. For more information about the BAAS Conference or to book your place, please click here.

Exploring American Histories: A Survey Text for the Twentieth-first Century, October 15

Randall Stephens

click to enlarge

Here's the new poster for the 2014-15 American Studies Events and Research Seminars.  (See the picture at the bottom of the poster from the Selma to Montgomery March, 1965.)

I'd especially like to draw attention to the first in the American Studies Seminar series, co-sponsored with History.
On Wednesday, October 15 we have the pleasure to host Nancy A. Hewitt (Rutgers University) and Steven F. Lawson (Rutgers University) who will be speaking on: "Exploring American Histories: A Survey Text for the Twentieth-first Century," at 4:30pm in Lipman 033.

Says Professor Hewitt of her research and writing:

My interests include American women's history, nineteenth century U.S. history, women's activism in all its wonderful variety, women and work, the interplay of race and class with sex/gender, religion and reform, and feminism in comparative perspective. I am currently rethinking the grand narrative of American women's early political history--from Seneca Falls to suffrage--by placing the events of the period in a more global context and by taking seriously the versions of woman's rights embraced by African Americans, workers, immigrants, and American Indians. I am also working on a biography of nineteenth-century radical activist, Amy Post.

Says Professor Lawson:

My main areas of research have been the history of the civil rights movement, especially the expansion of black voting rights and black politics. My major publications include: Black Ballots: Voting Rights in the South, 1944-1969; In Pursuit of Power: Southern Blacks and Electoral Politics, 1965-1982; Running for Freedom: Civil Rights and Black Politics in America Since 1941; and Debating the Civil Rights Movement (with Charles Payne). I have also written about the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson and his civil rights programs. I am also interested in the connection between civil rights and the political culture the late 1950s and early 1960s. In this vein, I have done research on civil rights, fear of conspiracies, rock ‘n’ roll, and the Payola Scandal of 1959-60.

The presentation "Exploring American Histories" next Wednesday will:

focus on the intellectual challenges faced by scholars in the humanities when they move from writing monographs and research articles to work on university level text books. But it also will consider the potential reciprocal benefits of that relationship. How might working with big themes and having to distill complex narratives and arguments feed back into good, innovative scholarship?  How does teaching inform the ways that scholars compose general text books?  How does the process of writing these differ from the process of writing monographs?

The talks will be followed by a Q&A session.