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Toni Morrison Day 2022

Friday, February 18, 2022



Program Schedule

10:05 – 11:25 a.m.: Faculty Scholarship Panel
Moderated by Dr. Frank Fury

  • Dr. Melissa Alvare: “The Maintenance of Racial Education Inequality & Limitations of Diversity-Focused Trainings as Antidotes.”
  • Dr. Nancy Mezey, Dean of the Honors School and Professor of Sociology, Chad Dell, Professor of Communications, and Graduate Research Assistant Graciela St. Onge: “The 369th: Together, We Rose.”
  • Katelyn Snyder: “Sovereignty and Rape as ‘Love’ in Butler’s Kindred.”
  • Linda Sacks and Brittany Scardigno: “Reading and Writing about Linguistic Justice.”

11:40 a.m. -1 p.m.: Keynote Speaker
Dr. Regina Duthely, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of English, University of Puget Sound

The Stories Black Women Tell: (Counter)storytelling and Embodied Freedom

When humanity is denied, how do Black women tell different stories about their lives? This presentation examines the ways that Black women’s bodies tell stories, how those stories are informed by the hauntings of oppression and violence, and Black women’s resistance to those hauntings through an embodied rhetorical practice centered on pleasure, joy, beauty, and love. “The Stories Black Women Tell” argues that Black women work to reclaim the body and exercise ownership over that body through (counter)storytelling.

1:15 – 2:35 p.m.:  Faculty Roundtable
Moderated by Dr. Anwar Uhuru

  • Devonya Havis, Ph.D., University at Buffalo Center for Diversity Innovation Distinguished Visiting Scholar, 2021-22 and Associate Professor of Philosophy, Canisius College
  • Joanna Davis-McElligatt, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Black Literary Studies, University of North Texas
  • Corey Neill Reed, Doctoral Candidate in Philosophy, University of Memphis
  • Vickie Masseus, Doctoral Candidate in English, St. John’s University

2:50 – 4:10 p.m.:  Student Scholarship Panel
Moderated by Prof. Jennifer Harpootlian

  • Gillian Demetriou: “Emerging from the Shadows: The Julian Abele Project at Monmouth University.”
  • Jaimy Joji: “Historical Connections Used as Major Issues in the Plot of Toni Morrison’s Beloved.”
  • Nashaviyah Steward, “An analysis of relationships in“Recitatif” and “The Thing in the Forest”.”
Program Cover for Toni Morrison Day 2022 includes a photo of the poet as well as this year's keynote speaker Dr. Regina Duthely

Meet the Keynote Speaker

Regina Duthely, Keynote Speaker for Toni Morrison Day 2022

Regina Duthely is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA. She specializes in Black feminist digital rhetorics, African American rhetorics, and multimodal composition and rhetoric. In her article “Black Feminist Hip-Hop Rhetorics and the Digital Public Sphere” (Changing English, 2017), she argues that digital public discourse spaces like Twitter and blogs like The Crunk Feminist Collective allow for Black voices not only to be inserted in the mainstream media, but to transform those media to center Black women’s epistemological and ontological practices. Dr. Duthely is currently working on a book length manuscript exploring Black women’s embodied digital rhetorics. 

Third Annual Toni Morrison Day Poetry Competition - click or tap to view and download flyer for details
Third Annual Toni Morrison Day Poetry Competition– click or tap to view and download flyer
Third Annual Toni Morrison Day Digital Poster Competition - click or tap to view and download flyer for details
Third Annual Toni Morrison Day Digital Poster Competition – click or tap to view and download flyer