Extra Credit

On Friday, September 19th I attended the conference on African American expression in print and digital culture (this was the conference held at 5:30). This conference had a somewhat surprisingly large amount of attendants, enough to nearly fill the theater-sized lecture room in the Elvehjem (Chazen Museum) building. There were people in the audience from all over the country to my surprise, some from places as far as Canada, France, and Israel. The keynote speaker who was the focus of the conference was professor Gabrielle Foreman. In addition to being an advocate for African American youth empowerment, she discussed her role as a "black feminist scholar", and noted some of the challenges that arose in being one of just a few who specialize in this area. Currently, she is anticipating the release of a new book, The Art of Dismemory, in which she focuses on poetry and works about "Dave the potter". Some of Foreman's additional focuses were on the recovery of lost writings of African Americas and influential librarians such as Dorothy Porter Wesley. Aside from the lengthiness of the conference, I found the new insights and perspectives of looking at print culture to be interesting. Additionally, I noticed some correlations between the conference and one of the classes I am taking this semester--SOC 134: American racial and ethnic minorities.

(Here is a lovely selfie I took prior to the conference--post workout..)