Conference Presentations and Individual Talks
Conference Presentations and Individual Talks on Phillis Wheatley Peters in 2023
Conference Presentations and Individual Talks on Phillis Wheatley Peters in 2023
Here, we provide a representative listing of Wheatley-Peters-focused presentations from various organizations’ 2023 programs so that you can contact speakers directly if you’d like to request more information about their work. In cases where we have secured permission to pass along a copy of the presentation, you’ll find a link to the paper or an abstract.
If you’d like to have a conference session/paper added to our listing, please send that information to Professor Robbins, following the format below. We’d also welcome news about—and resources from—individual lectures or informal public talks, particularly if you are able to share an abstract or a video link to your work. Send to [email protected]
If you have presented on Wheatley Peters during 2023, and you’d like to share your work here (in full or in abstract), please send a copy to “The Genius of Phillis Wheatley Peters” co-director Sarah Ruffing Robbins with confirmation that you give permission to post your contribution on this website. [email protected]
Thank you for helping to make our website a participatory space of shared learning and networking among communities dedicated to study of Wheatley Peters, her writing, and her era.
If you’d like to have a conference session/paper added to our listing, please send that information to Professor Robbins, following the format below. We’d also welcome news about—and resources from—individual lectures or informal public talks, particularly if you are able to share an abstract or a video link to your work. Send to [email protected]
If you have presented on Wheatley Peters during 2023, and you’d like to share your work here (in full or in abstract), please send a copy to “The Genius of Phillis Wheatley Peters” co-director Sarah Ruffing Robbins with confirmation that you give permission to post your contribution on this website. [email protected]
Thank you for helping to make our website a participatory space of shared learning and networking among communities dedicated to study of Wheatley Peters, her writing, and her era.
Download a PDF of our preliminary listing of 2023 conference presentations focused on Phillis Wheatley Peters, her writing, and her era below.

wheatley_presentations_2023.pdf | |
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MLA Conference in San Francisco, January
Session: Phillis Wheatley (Peters) Futures
The future of Wheatley studies depends on our collective curiosity about who she is. Contributors to an upcoming special issue of Early American Literature highlight new approaches to Wheatley’s work and legacy. Tara Bynum, U of Iowa; Donald Holmes, Carnegie Mellon U; Camille Owens, Harvard U; Christy Pottroll, Boston C; Cassander Smith, U of Alabama, Tuscaloosa; Ana Schwartz, U of Texas, Austin (Presider) Session: Wheatley in London Papers: Wheatley’s Travels: An Afro-British American Poetics of Pan-Africanism April C. E. Langley, U of South Carolina, Columbia Writing the Weather in Wheatley Peters’s Voyages Annette Hulbert, Williamette U Phillis Wheatley, Abolition, and Alexander Pope Surya Parekh, Binghamton U, State U of New York Wheatley’s British Empire Joseph Rezek, Boston U Session: How Literacy Transforms Histories and Lives Paper: Phillis Wheatley’s Literacy Records as Resource for Creative Writers Today Presenter: Sarah Ruffing Robbins Download a copy of this paper here. |
ASECS Conference in March, St. Louis, MO
Session: Genres of the Atlantic I
Paper: “I Knew You Loved Me When You Did Not Speak of Ships”: Phillis Wheatley, Honoree Fanonne-Jeffers and the Poetics of Arrival” K. Avvirin Gray, Washington and Lee University Session: Poetry and the Arts Paper: Phillis Wheatley Peters’ Desire to Look: Ekphrasis and Lyric Interiority Chip Badley, University of California, Davis Session: When the 1700s Go Diachronic: Music, Fashion, Politics Paper: The Trials of Elizabeth Warren: Phillis Wheatley-Peters and the 2020 Campaign Micah Bateman, University of Iowa Session: Phillis Wheatley Peters’ Poems on Various Subjects at 250 Years (Aphra Behn Society I) Presider: Megan Peiser (Choctaw), Oakland University Papers: “On Recollection”; or, Phillis Wheatley-Peters Invoke the Muses James Ford, Occidental College, Grief and Grievance in Poems on Various Subjects Anna Foy, Sewanee: The University of the South Phillis Wheatley Peters’s Transatlantic Poetics Leah M. Thomas, Virginia State University Read abstract of talk here: leah_m_thomas_phillis_wheatley_peters_transatlantic_poetics_abstract.docx Read presentation here: leah_thomas_phillis_wheatley_peters_transatlantic_poetics_presentation.pdf Phillis and the Oceans Mona Narain, Texas Christian University, Copy of Abstract from Mona Narain Phillis Wheatley and Conjunctural Black Aesthetics Mark Vareschi, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Session: Phillis Wheatley Peters’ Poems on Various Subjects at 250 Years (Aphra Behn Society II) Presider: Amanda Springs, SUNY Maritime College Papers: The Faith of Phillis Wheatley Keith Byerman, Indiana State University Lost Letters? Wheatley Peters and the Verse Epistle Abigail Zitin, Rutgers University–New Brunswick New Poems and Legacies Wendy R. Roberts, University at Albany, SUNY Phillis Wheatley as Jane Austen’s Contemporary? Misty Krueger, University of Maine at Farmington Rhyming Rivals: Phillis Wheatley Peters Plays a Poem Game Jennifer Factor, Brandeis University Copy of abstract from Jennifer Factor |
BAAS Conference in April, Keele University
“Interdisciplinary Connections for Studying and Teaching Phillis Wheatley Peters”--Commentaries and Conversations, TCU
Papers:
Epidemics of Slave Trade Molly Weingburgh Read abstract of talk here: weinburgh_abstract.docx Reimagining Phillis Wheatley Peters: Religion and Resistance Alonzo Smith Read abstract of talk here: smith_abstract.docx A Girls' Studies Approach to Phillis Wheatley Peters Ariane M. Balizet Read abstract of talk here: balizet_abstract.docx |
SEA Conference in June, University of Maryland
Session: Approaches to Eighteenth-Century Black Lives and Leaders
Papers: Phillis Wheatley’s Oceans Magdalena Zapędowska, Smith College How ‘Sportive Fancy’ Plays: Phillis Wheatley Peters and the Poem Game Jennifer Factor, Brandeis University and the California Institute of Technology Session: Black Literary Studies in Early America Paper: Phillis Wheatley ‘Passes’ an Evening with Someone Else’s Husband; Or, Towards an 18th-Century Black Community in Rhode Island Tara Bynum, University of Iowa Session: The Black Atlantic at Thirty Paper: Phillis Wheatley and Canon Formation/Reformation in the Black Atlantic/Transatlantic Phillip M. Richards, Colgate University Session: Phillis Wheatley Peters’ Legacies Across Time Papers: Erasing the ‘Stain of Slavery’: Isaac Knapp’s Antislavery Edition of Wheatley Peters’ Poems on Various Subjects Barbara McCaskill, University of Georgia Imagining an American National Poetics: Charles Frederick Heartman’s Early 20th-Century Recovery of Phillis Wheatley Peters Sarah Ruffing Robbins, TCU See PPT from talk here Read copy of talk here Phillis: Traversing Time and Space Alison Clarke, Writers Guild of Alberta Read abstract here: clarke_abstract.docx Read presentation here: clarke_presentation.docx |
ISECS/SIEDS Conference in Rome
July 3-7, 2023
July 3-7, 2023
Session: Phillis Wheatley: Rethinking Legacies of the Enlightenment through Antiquity
Presider: Mona Narain, Texas Christian University, USA Download a copy of this Session Proposal here. Papers: Download all paper abstracts here: narain-roundtable_bios-abstracts_isecs_2023.pdf “Suspend the Sigh, dear Sir, and check the Groan”: Phillis Wheatley’s gender-subversive affirmation of neoclassical elegy Katarina Stenke, University of Greenwich, UK Lost Letters? Phillis Wheatley Peters and the Verse Epistle Abigail Zitin, Rutgers University, USA Rethinking the Revolution/Unbinding the Imagination: Phillis Wheatley, Philip Freneau, and the Classical Tradition Álvaro Albarrán Gutiérrez, University of Seville, Spain “Mental Optics”: Phillis Wheatley, Alexander Pope, and the Roman School Timothy Erwin, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA Allusion as Critique in Phillis Wheatley Peters’ “On Imagination” Amelia Worsley, Amherst College, USA Session: New Approaches to British Neoclassicism 1: Being Classical Presider: Sarah Ellenzweig, Rice University, USA Paper: 'Communities of Literary Practice in Pope and Wheatley' Tom Jones, University of St Andrews, UK Read abstract here: jones_abstract.docx |
Phillis Wheatley Celebration at TCU, August-September, 2023
August 30
Reading Poetry by and Inspired by Phillis Wheatley Peters Kelly Franklin Linda K. Hughes Theresa Gaul Mona Narain Download ppt of event here Watch recording of the event here September 7
Poetic Legacies: Interpreting New Texts from Writers inspired by Phillis Wheatley Peters drea brown Alison Clarke Watch recording of event here: |
Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival at Jackson State
November 1-4, 2023
November 1-4, 2023
For information about the many presentations planned for this multi-day event, visit the Festival website here.
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