Sunday, September 21, 2025
Daily Schedule Overview
All events are in Foster Auditorium in Paterno Library unless otherwise noted. Panels will be recorded and available online.
*** Check for updates as such will be provided ***
| 11:00 – 11:30 am | Coffee, Mann Assembly Room |
| 11:30 – 1:00 pm | Panel 3 – Reconstructing Frances Harper |
| 1:00 – 2:00 pm |
|
| 2:15 – 2:45 pm | Presentation: Mural Arts / Digital Exhibit |
| 3:00 – 4:30 pm | Panel 4 – New Perspectives in Harper Studies |
| 4:45 – 5:15 pm | Presentation: Poetry Book Collection |
| 5:15 – 5:30 pm | Closing Remarks and Closing Poem |
Table of Contents
11:30 am – 1:00 pm Panel 3 – Reconstructing Frances Harper
Poetry reading of original work of a typewriter poem(s) created by Britny Cordera
- Jim Downs, “‘I Became Acquainted with Her History’: Iola Leroy as the First Black History of Freed People during the Civil War and Reconstruction”
- Ariana Nadia Nash and Jacob Sloan, “Frances Harper’s Social Gospel: Radical Reconstruction & Radical Religion in Frances Harper’s ‘Moses: A Story of the Nile’”
- Lauren Barnes, “Rupturing Erasure: Reimagining Archival Practices through Frances Ellen Watkins Harper”
Moderator: Courtney Murray Ross
2:15 pm – 2:45 pm Presentation: Harper Mural by Brandi Locke and Donnell Powell / Harper Digital Exhibit by Courtney Murray Ross
3:00 pm – 4:30 pm Panel 4 – New Perspectives in Harper Studies
Poetry reading of “Songs for My People” by Angel Dye, based on Harper’s “Songs for the People”
- Brigitte Fielder, “Children’s Nature Poetry and Harper in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries”
- Katherine Adams, “’The Threshold of a New Era’: Frances E.W. Harper and the Political Economy of Freedom”
- Robert Arbour, “The Air of Emancipation in Frances Watkins Harper’s Anti-slavery Poetry”
- Amardeep Singh, “Frances E.W. Harper’s Afropessimist Poetics”
Moderator: Eunice Toh
4:45 pm – 5:15 pm Presentation: Poetry Book Collection by Carmin Wong, Hunter Reed, and Norma Sannon
5:15 pm – 5:30 pm Closing Remarks by Sherita L. Johnson and P. Gabrielle Foreman
5:30 pm Closing Poem by Glenis Redmond
SCHEDULE UPDATED 9/09/25
Presenter Biographies
Katherine Adams is an Associate Professor of English and the inaugural Martha McCarty Kimmerling Chair in Women’s Literature at Tulane University.
Robert Arbour is an Assistant Professor of English & Writing at Spring Hill College.
Lauren Barnes is a Ph.D. Candidate in English and African American and Diaspora Studies.
Britny Cordera is a poet, nonfiction writer, and journalist who investigates the intersections between the environment and culture.
Jim Downs is the Gilder Lehrman-National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of Civil War Era Studies and History.
Angel C. Dye is a poet, researcher, and Assistant Professor of African American Literature at Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville.
P. Gabrielle Foreman co-directs the Center for Black Digital Research/#DigBlk at Penn State University and is the Colored Convention Project’s founding faculty director.
Brigitte Fielder is a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Sherita L. Johnson is the Director of the College of Liberal Arts’ Africana Research Center (ARC) and an Associate Professor of English at Penn State.
Brandi Locke is a senior team leader at the Colored Conventions Projects where she leads public arts projects with partnering organizations and arts-education communities for the Center for Black Digital Research at Penn State.
Ariana Nadia Nash is a poet and lecturer at University of Maryland College Park.
Courtney Murray Ross is an Assistant Professor of English at James Madison University. As a past #DigBlk fellow at the Center for Black Digital Research, she worked with Douglass Day and Digital Exhibit teams.
Donnell Powell is the Community Murals Project Manager at Mural Arts Phiadelphia.
Glenis Redmond is grounded in many worlds as a Poet, Teaching Artist, and Imagination Activist. She is the First Poet Laureate of Greenville, South Carolina, a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, a Cave Canem alumni, and the author of six books of poetry.
Hunter Reed is a #DigBlk Poetry Project Assistant and an undergraduate in Landscape Architecture at Penn State University.
Norma Sannon is a #DigBlk Poetry Project Assistant and undergraduate in Global and International Studies at Penn State University.
Amardeep Singh is a Professor of English at Lehigh University.
Jacob Sloan is a socialist activist with the Tempest Collective and a member of the Howard University Non-Tenure Track Faculty Union. He teaches and writes about the global working-class novel and has recently published in Mediations and Socialism and Democracy.
Eunice Toh, #DigBlk Research Associate, PhD in English and African American and Diaspora Studies from Penn State.
Carmin Wong is a poet, playwright, and scholar of Black literature and orature. She is a #DigBlk Scholar pursuing a dual-title PhD in English Literature and African American and Diaspora Studies. Carmin is the Inaugural Poet Laureate of State College, Pennsylvania.
Supported by:
Generosity of
individual donors
#Harper200 Organizing Committee:
Lauren Barnes, Jacqueline Barrios, Denise Burgher, Sergio Carmona, Lauren Cooper, Samantha de Vera, Rachel Fernandes, Gabrielle Foreman, Sherita L. Johnson, Brandi Locke, Lynnette Young Overby, Courtney Murray Ross, Gabby Sutherland, Eunice Toh, and Takina Walker.
Additional Collaborators and Partners:
Jim Casey, Chanel Edwards, Eden Mekonen, Janel Moore-Almond, Amber Rance, Jormailin Valdés Pareras, Carol Rudisell, and Curtis Small.
Additional Contributors:
Kenisha Brown, Hunter Reed, Tahfiq Williams,
and members of the Center for Black Digital Research/#DigBlk throughout the years.