The Nicknames of Distortion: A Hortense Spillers symposium

A 2022–23 Shauna M. Stark ’76, P’10 Out of the Archive Event.

In 2019, renowned American literary critic and Black feminist scholar Hortense Spillers donated her papers to the Pembroke Center’s Feminist Theory Archive in the name of the Black Feminist Theory Project, and in April 2022, the Pembroke Center opened the exhibit “Hortense Spillers: A Life Recorded.” This symposium is a celebration of both the collection and exhibit. It will bring together graduate students, early-career scholars, and independent scholars to study and discuss Spillers’s contributions to intellectual and pedagogical practices in the fields of Black feminist criticism, literary studies, and cultural studies, among others.

This symposium will include a keynote talk by C. Riley Snorton (University of Chicago). Spillers will be present and participating in this event. There will be a conversation between Spillers and Margo Natalie Crawford, University of Pennsylvania, to close the symposium.

The symposium is 1:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Friday and 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Saturday.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Africana Studies, the Department of American Studies, the Department of English, and the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America.

Presented with the support of the Friends of the Pembroke Center.