Exhibit at the University of St Andrews with Digital/Online Option
To celebrate the anniversary of Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subject, Religious and Moral, the University of St Andrews has mounted a display of the copy of the book it has held in its Library since 1773. The book can be found in Gallery 2 of the Wardlaw Museum, on The Scores. Next to it are two other books from our collections that respond to Wheatley in very different ways: The Letters of Ignatius Sancho, An African and Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia. To supplement the physical exhibition, an online Exhibit has been created that compares different copies of Wheatley’s book, looks at the history of the St Andrews copy, and considers Wheatley’s writing practice and social networks. You can access the exhibit here: https://www.exhibit.so/exhibits/A9v7lFvtD3hct3WbK8cf
Thank you to Tom Jones of St Andrews for providing this profile of–and link to–the exhibition.
Thank you to Tom Jones of St Andrews for providing this profile of–and link to–the exhibition.
Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival at Jackson State
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In 1973, Margaret Walker hosted a groundbreaking conference in celebration of the bicentennial of Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Under the Black Studies Institute that Walker had founded five years earlier at Jackson State, thirty leading Black women participated in a series of lectures, roundtable discussions, poetry readings, and other events on campus.
Fifty years later, seven of the ten living participants from the original Festival will reconvene at Jackson State for intergenerational conversations and readings featuring the likes of Alice Walker, Sonia Sanchez, Jesmyn Ward, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Imani Perry, and Elizabeth Alexander. Join us as we lift up Margaret Walker, Phillis Wheatley, and the legacy of Black women writers. Festival Website: https://www.jsums.edu/philliswheatley/ 
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Past Activities
Special Issue of Early American Literature
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“Dear Sisters: Phillis Wheatley's Futures” is a special issue of the journal Early American Literature. It features full-form essays and shorter archival essays, a pedagogical forum, and poems by undergraduate students that emphasize new scholarly directions in Wheatley studies. Where do we go from here? The special issue appeared at the end of 2022 in anticipation of the 250th anniversary in 2023 of Poems on Various Subjects.
Here, in a PDF file, we provide citations and abstracts of the full-length essays in the special issue and citations from the “Inventions” section. Thank you to the journal and the editors of the special issue for making this material available. We appreciate this opprtunity to salute this work as one of the “sister” projects honoring the 2023 anniversary of the publication of Wheatley's 1773 poems. PDF file of Contents list, citations, and abstracts
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Library Company of Philadelphia
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“The Past, Present, and Future of Phillis Wheatley: 250 Years Later”
Wednesday, April 5 | 6:30pm | Virtual Event Moderated by Dr. Tara Bynum, this conversation with poets Dr. drea brown and Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs 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. Dr. drea brown is the author of dear girl: a reckoning (Gold Line Press, 2015), and co-editor of Teaching Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Life and Literature (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021). Their writing has appeared in publications such as Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Stand Our Ground: Poems for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander, About Place Journal, Smithsonian Magazine, and Zócalo Public Square. drea is currently an assistant professor in the English Department at Texas State University. Dr. Tara Bynum is an Assistant Professor of English & African American Studies and a scholar of early African American literary histories before 1800. She received her PhD in English from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in Political Science from Barnard College. Her book Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in America (University of Illinois Press, 2023), examines the ways in which 18th-century enslaved and/or free men and women feel good or experience pleasure in spite of the privations of slavery, “unfreedom,” or white supremacy. Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a Queer Black Feminist Love Evangelist and an aspirational cousin to all life. She is/they are the author of several books, most recently Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals (AK Press, 2020), and the co-founder of the Mobile Homecoming Trust, an intergenerational experiential living library of Black LBGTQ brilliance. |
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Phillis Wheatley and Friends: Celebrating 250 Years of Wheatley’s Poems
Members $175 | Non-members $200 | Virtual Three-Session Seminar Phillis Wheatley is often fixed in time as a lone, singular voice. Led by Dr. Tara Bynum, this 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. 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 Please feel free to reach out with any questions about either event by contacting events@librarycompany.org. |
