Symposium at SUNY New Paltz to focus on diversity, history and memory

NEW PALTZ — The University Writing Board at the State University of New York at New Paltz will host its annual spring symposium, titled “Diversity, History, Memory,” at 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 9, in the Coykendall Science Building Auditorium on the New Paltz campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Spelman College (Atlanta, Ga.) professor and historian Anne C. Bailey, author of “African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Beyond the Silence and the Shame” (Beacon Press, 2005), will deliver the keynote address, which focuses on memories of the slave trade from the African perspective. Popularized in the mid-18th century, first-hand accounts of slavery in the United States – including book-length narratives – number in the thousands.

The symposium panel also includes three SUNY New Paltz scholars: Education professor Laura Dull will present “Friendly Africans, Deceptive White Men: Ghanaian Narratives of the Nation”; Black Studies professor Albert Williams-Myers will present “Silencing the Silencers: Reconstructing Memory in the African Burial Ground”; and Art professor Patricia Phillips will present “Making Memory.”

In addition to the Writing Board, event sponsors include the departments of Black Studies, Communication and Media, English and the Honors Program.

For more information about the event, contact Pauline Uchmanowicz, chair of the University Writing Board, at (845) 257-2755.