Author Sapphire, Talks, Symposium Highlight African American Studies Open House April 7-11 at UA

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The University of Alabama’s African American Studies Program is celebrating the expanding work of its mission with a series of events during its Open House Week, which runs from Monday, April 7 to Friday, April 11.

Highlights of the program include talks by Sapphire, author of the acclaimed novel “Push,” who will deliver the Martin Luther King Jr. Distinguished Lecture. While in Alabama, Sapphire will meet with women participants in Auburn University’s Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project in the Julia Tutwiler State Prison in Wetumpka April 8 and with Tuscaloosa Housing Authority residents at the Delaware Jackson Apartments Community Center in Tuscaloosa April 9. Each of these groups has received complimentary copies of “Push” and is eager to meet the author and discuss the book.

The African American Studies program, an interdisciplinary program made up of affiliated faculty from various departments across the university, recently moved into its own office.

“We want to introduce The University of Alabama campus as well as Tuscaloosa to the African American Studies program and the features we offer,” said Dr. DoVeanna Fulton, director of African American studies and associate professor of American Studies. “These events will foster discussion and expose university students and surrounding communities to diverse intellectual and creative approaches that address injustice and the fullness of humanity.”

All events are free and open to the public. For details, phone 205/348-5761. Here is a list of events:

Monday, April 7: Priscilla Hancock Cooper: “Writing Our Stories” Workshop from 3 to 5 p.m. and a reading at 7 p.m. at the Heritage Room, Ferguson Center.

Cooper, vice president of institutional programs at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, teaches writing for the Alabama Writers’ Forum “Writing Our Stories” project at the Alabama Department of Youth Services Chalkville campus. “Writing Our Stories” has become a model project for arts programs for incarcerated juveniles. Under the leadership of executive director Jeanie Thompson, the forum has trained teachers and juvenile justice workers from other schools in Alabama as well as Mississippi and Indiana.

Tuesday, April 8: Black Environmental Thought Symposium, 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., Ferguson Forum. Events and speakers are:

• Film Screening: “Homecoming. Homecoming” is the first film to explore the rural roots of African American life. It chronicles the generations-old struggle of African Americans for land of their own which pitted them against both the Southern white power structure and the federal agencies responsible for helping them.
• Kimberly N. Ruffin, “Digging in the Dirt: Agriculture and African American Environmental Perspectives.” Ruffin, assistant professor of English at Roosevelt University in Chicago, is writing a book, “Black on Earth: African Americans and Ecological Insights,” which expands the reaches of ecocriticism by combining ecocritical and cultural criticism to analyze texts about and by African Americans.
• Andrew Williams, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, will discuss the plight of African American farmers in Alabama and the work of the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Tuesday, April 8: Sapphire’s “Push” and Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project, 6 p.m., Julia Tutwiler State Prison, Wetumpka. Sapphire, author of the novel “Push,” meets with women at Julia Tutwiler State Prison. Published in 1996, “Push” won the Book-of-the-Month Club Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction, the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s First Novelist Award and, in Great Britain, the Mind Book of the Year Award. A film adaptation of the novel is in production.

Wednesday, April 9: Sapphire’s “Push” in Community Book Discussion, 1 to 3 p.m., Tuscaloosa Housing Authority-Delaware Jackson Apartments Community Center. Sapphire meets with residents of Tuscaloosa Housing Authority to discuss “Push.”

Thursday, April 10: Martin Luther King, Jr. Distinguished Lecture, 7 p.m., Ferguson Theatre. Sapphire, novelist, poet and performance artist, presents “I WANTED TO WRITE,” in which she discusses the circumstances of writing and publishing her novel, “Push.” Sapphire also is the author of two books of poetry, “Black Wings & Blind Angels” and “American Dreams.”

Friday, April 11: Ray Arsenault, “Freedom Riders: History, Human Rights, and Law.” Arsenault is keynote speaker for “Race & Place in the American South” Sixth Biennial Conference. The lecture is at 4:30 p.m. in the AIME Building, Room 111.

Arsenault is the author of “Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice.” Arsenault is the John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History and co-director of the Florida Studies Program at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg. He is the author of two prize-winning books and numerous articles on race, civil rights, and regional culture. Race & Place in the American South 6th Biennial Conference is sponsored by the Summersell Center for the Study of the South.

Co-sponsors are the African American Studies program, College of Arts and Sciences, Martin Luther King Jr. Realizing the Dream Committee, Campus Activities, New College, Crossroads Community Center, Communications Studies, American Studies, English, Religious Studies, Women’s Studies, Creative Campus, School of Social Work and University Libraries.

UA’s College of Arts and Sciences is the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the college have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All American Team.