N.B.: I am posting this on behalf of the conference organizers: Shelley
Fisher Fishkin, Gavin Jones,  Meta Jones, Arnold Rampersad and Richard
Yarborough.

All e-mail inquiries should be directed to:

[log in to unmask]

Thank you-- K.B.

*****

Stanford University's Program in American Studies Announces

Paul Laurence Dunbar: A Centennial Conference at Stanford University, March
9-11, 2006

This conference will celebrate the centennial of Dunbar's death by exploring
new critical perspectives on the full range of his career as a poet,
novelist, lyricist, dramatist, and journalist.  The conference organizers
will edit a selection of the papers for a special issue of African American
Review.

We welcome papers exploring Dunbar as an individual challenged by complex
psychological, esthetic, social, and political pressures.  We seek lectures
that place him in the context of historical phenomena such as slavery and
the Civil War, Reconstruction, lynching, race riots, and landmark Jim Crow
legislation such as Plessy v. Ferguson.  We want to consider Dunbar as a
regional, national, and international writer, and as a stylistic innovator
of the highest order.   We also invite papers on his relationship to his
literary predecessors, contemporaries, and successors--writers such as
Harriet Beecher Stowe, James Whitcomb Riley, William Dean Howells, Frederick
Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Mark Twain, W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington,
Charles Chesnutt, James Weldon Johnson, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Langston
Hughes, and more recent poets.  We also hope to explore Dunbar's engagement
with the musical theater, popular song, minstrelsy, spoken-word poetry, and
reading-speaking tours; with visual culture, such as the Hampton Camera
Club; and with notable cultural events, such as the World's Columbian
Exposition.

Sponsored by the American Studies Program at Stanford University, this
conference is organized by the director of the program, Shelley Fisher
Fishkin, Gavin Jones (Stanford), Meta DuEwa Jones (George Washington),
Arnold Rampersad (Stanford), and Richard Yarborough (UCLA). Co-sponsors
include the Office of the President of Stanford University; Office of the
Dean of Humanities & Sciences; Department of English; Department of History;
Stanford Continuing Studies; Program in African and African American
Studies; Stanford Humanities Center; and the Central Region Humanities
Center.

If you are interested in presenting a paper, or in attending the conference,
please let us know at once at the email address below.  Note that August 1
is the deadline for receiving paper proposals.   To propose a paper, please
send an abstract of about 600 words in length by August 1, 2005,  along with
a one-page c.v. and  contact information to:   [log in to unmask]

The conference will be free to all registrants.  In addition, we expect to
provide travel and lodging support for all presenters.