Deadline: 15 December 2010
Much important work has been done on the recovery of long-forgotten black scholars of the classics in the United States between the end of the Civil War and the mid-twentieth century. These studies have established and even burnished the by now familiar paradigm of the African American mastering the classics to prove that he or she is a human being in the traditional sense of what a "human being" should be.
We are now entering the second phase of black classicism, one which describes appropriations and in some cases radical transformations of classical sources by poets, novelists, and visual artists as well as a reappraisal of what constitutes the classics themselves. Scholars are also exploring the use of the classics as tools of resistance by African American professors and their students when faced with the phasing out of classics courses at black colleges and universities: this was not only due to budgetary constraints but also to hostility on the part of both blacks and whites to the liberal arts, and a favoring of industrial education as more
appropriate to the segregated lives African-Americans were forced to lead in the United States of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
In her excellent review essay in Classical Receptions Journal 1.1. (2009), Emily Greenwood provides a possible template for an exploration of where black classicism may be moving, that is, toward a classicism within the black consciousness, but a classicism, ultimately, that breaks down any distinction between "white" and "black". She adduces the work of Romare Bearden, Rita Dove, Toni Morrison and others to describe the richness of the classical experience in the 21st century. It is a movement, she states, even beyond multiculturalism; it is a universalization of the classical experience We may, however, at the same time treat such "universalism" with skepticism, arguing that classics still remains too much an "old white boy" discipline. This, too, is a topic that invites further discussion.
Our panel seeks papers that speak to all areas of research into the current state and future prospects of black classicism, papers that do not merely catalogue the achievements of prominent black scholars, but also represent the wide spectrum of work being done today both within and inside academe to appropriate, incorporate and transform our understanding of the Greek and Latin classics. In speaking about this transformation, we must keep in mind both the "products" of black classicism and how classics have themselves transformed the black experience.
The proposed panel will be comprised of participants selected though those interested in participating should please submit, as an email attachment, by no later than December 15, 2010, an abstract of no more than one page in length to Judith P Hallett, jeph@umd.edu. Please do not indicate your name on the abstract itself.