This April, the Library Company is holding a monthlong celebration to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Phillis Wheatley Peters’ Poems on Various Subjects. On the first Wednesday of the month, April 5th, we will be hosting “The Past, Present, and Future of Phillis Wheatley Peters: 250 Years Later”, a conversation with poet-scholars Dr. drea brown and Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs.
Moderated by Dr. Tara A. Bynum (author of Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America), this conversation will explore the life and legacy of Phillis Wheatley in the wake of the 250th anniversary of the celebration of her seminal work, Poems on Various Subjects. As Bynum writes in a letter to Gumbs, “Wheatley writes and publishes a collection of poems and (depending on who you ask), she helps author an entire literary tradition. But as we peer into her world, what we see isn’t radical so much as it is what we must do and what we actually do often without thinking or even intent – make friends and fellowship/worship together.” Join these three contemporary Black writers as they make fellowship in celebration of Wheatley’s living and ongoing influence. You can register for that event here.
Following the kickoff event on the 5th will be a three-session virtual seminar, “Phillis Wheatley and Friends: Celebrating 250 Years of Wheatley’s Poems”. Also led by Dr. Bynum, who you can see quoted in this New York Times piece about a related effort to reframe Wheatley’s life and legacy and in this video about the importance of establishing an African American historical archive, this seminar rejects efforts to fix Wheatley in time as a lone, singular voice. Bynum’s course will introduce students to another story for the young poet and, by implication, a new story for early African American writing. What if Wheatley is not by herself, but is instead an active interlocutor, friend, writer, and lover in various communities throughout New England, England, and elsewhere? These communities buy Wheatley’s book, live through a war, and later have to mourn the loss of their friend. They are communities, too, that write, read, and leave behind a legacy in manuscript and in print.
The aim of the class is to ask new questions and to situate this writing amidst old, new, and different ways of reading and to center the living of Black women and men in the latter half of the eighteenth century. See below for session information and the registration link.
Session One: Wednesday, April 12th | 6:00-7:30pm
Session Two: Wednesday, April 19th | 6:00-7:30pm
Session Three: Wednesday, April 26th | 6:00-7:30pm
Member cost: $175 for the entire course | Non-member cost: $200 for the entire course
Register for the seminar here
