THE LANGSTON HUGHES SOCIETY
AT SAMLA 2020

The Langston Hughes Society will be holding its annual panel at the 92nd South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA) Convention on Saturday, November 14, 2020, from 5:15 to 6:45 PM. The session is entitled "'To Express Our Individual Dark-Skinned Selves Without Fear or Shame': Provoking Restricted Images of Blackness in the Harlem Renaissance and Beyond." Presentations focus on authors of the Harlem Renaissance and beyond who critiqued, condemned, and provoked restricted images of Blackness in an effort 1) to avoid reinforcing monolithic representations of Blackness in the U.S. cultural imagination, 2) to demand a vision of racial uplift that does not abandon the under-educated and working class, and 3) to destabilize prescriptive notions of Black artists’ responsibilities in defining a uniquely Black art.

Control of Black Artistic Presentation: Langston Hughes and Percival Everett
Courtney Walton, Loyola University Chicago

“Been on the Blacklist All Our Lives”: Langston Hughes as Sociocultural Provocateur in the Harlem Renaissance Era, or Progenitor of the New New Negro
Christopher Allen Varlack, Arcadia University

Windows on Everyday Harlem: The Cartoons of Ollie Harrington
Clémence Sfadj, Fordham University