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.