African American Poetries Summer Institute

Don’t Deny My Voice: Reading and Teaching African American Poetries is a fifteen-month program funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities that responds to the resurgence of interest in contemporary poetry, its expanded production and wide circulation. The program focuse on the history, changes and modal transformations of African American poetry in our cultural and social landscape and consider three critical periods: 1900-1960, 1960-80 and 1980-present.

Special attention will be paid to the divergent and yet cross-fertilizing trajectories of black poetry since the 1980s, which has produced both the sharp and vocal critiques of spoken word poetry and the refined academic poetry that garners so much critical attention from the literary establishment.

The application deadline for the summer institute July 14 – August 3, 2013 at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS is March 4, 2013.