LOUISVILLE 2012

It's a long walk to Louisville, to paraphrase the Staple Singers. 2012 marks the 40th anniversary of the conference formerly known as the Twentieth Century Literature conference, now rechrisitened as the University of Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture after 1900, or "LCLC" antiacronymically. I was there to participate in the first of a rolling series of panels on the life and legacy of Gil Scott-Heron, featuring papers by Tyrone Williams and Stephane Robollin along with mine. The next of these panels will be at CLA in Atlanta later this month, with Tony Bolden and Mickey New, and a third will be presented at ALA in San Francisco at the end of May. Keynoters at Louisville this year included Simon Critchley, Karen Tei Yamashita, Tom McCarthy and Dee Morris. Though there were no keynote poetry readings this time out, Dee's presentation on digital poetries was a great way to close out the conference. As in past years, we retired to La Casa Golding for poetry and partying once we had all the sessions behind us. The party poetry reading will go up on Penn Sound shortly.

ARTICULATING AFRICANA PHILOSOPHY

Another conference from the Fall I'm just getting time to post here -- ARTICULATING AFRICANA PHILOSOPHY at Penn State in November. Things got off to a start a day earlier with an intesive symposium on Fanon -- but early the next morning in a tiny room just off campus a huge crowd of big thinkers gathered for a series of conversations about the field of Africana philosophy and its current state. Very nearly everybody was here. A partial list includes: Devonia Havis, Lewis Gordon, Lou Turner, Denise James, Arnold Farr, Chike Jeffers, Charles Mills, Luvell Anderson, Olufemi Taiwo, Kristie Dotson, David McClean, Ronald Sundstrom, Bernard Boxill, J. Everet Green, Barry Hallen, Frank Kirkland, Lucius Outlaw, Al Prettyman, Mickaella Perina, Rozena Maart, Nigel Gibson . . . Mostly organized through the might mighty efforts of Kathryn Gines and Paul Taylor.


I've never seen anything quite like this concentration of Africana philosophy talent in one gathering, and I used to have an office in Alain Locke Hall!

Lucious Outlaw was, as usual, assiduously documenting everything, so we will hear and see more of this in time to come.

Charles Mills found himself in the position of having to get used to the idea of himself as an OG trailblazer, but he handled it gracefully.

There should be much, much more of this work sponsored by American universities.