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The Women of the Harlem Renaissance with Dr. Maria Seger

The Women of the Harlem Renaissance with Dr. Maria Seger


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Can't make this time? A video recording will be sent to all participants after the seminar.

How did Black women aesthetically navigate the liberatory gender and sexual potentials of the flapper era amidst the racism of Jim Crow? Join us for a seminar examining the women of the Harlem Renaissance who stood at the intersection of the new Negro and the new woman’s movements.
 The Harlem Renaissance has been a much-studied era of Black US culture, but significantly less attention has been paid to Black women’s vital contributions to this artistic movement. Across the 1920s and 1930s, as the new Negro movement rejecting Jim Crow racism picked up steam and the new woman’s movement promoting women’s autonomy and sexual freedom gained traction, Black women grappled with their place at these movements’ intersection in their artworks.
 Black women’s literature, art, music, and dance furthered the development of Harlem Renaissance Black cultural traditions. In inventing new forms of Black artistic expression that blended pan-African elements, high and low cultures, and experimental modernist forms, these artists both explored the past experience of and imagined a future for Black women in the United States.
 Examining Black women artists’ contributions in conversation, we’ll consider, for example, the literature of Angelina Weld Grimké and Nella Larsen alongside the sculpture of Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller and Augusta Savage and the musical stylings of Gladys Bentley and Bessie Smith. In doing so, we’ll discuss the literary trope of the tragic mulatta, histories of racial passing, the rhetoric of racial uplift, and the trauma of Black motherhood. In this moment of immense potential for cultural change, we’ll consider how and why Black women artists often understood race, gender, and sexuality as ambiguous, unfixed, and, at times, incomprehensible.
 Led by an expert on Black US literature and culture, Dr. Maria Seger, this interactive seminar will immerse participants in the spirit and culture of the Harlem Renaissance. Designed to inform curiosity as well as future travels, participants will come away with an increased understanding of and appreciation for the Black foremothers of some of the nation’s most popular artforms.

Maria Seger is an assistant professor of English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where she researches and teaches US, Black, and ethnic literatures and cultures and critical race and ethnic studies. Her work appears in Callaloo, Nineteenth-Century Literature, and Studies in American Naturalism, and her edited collection, Reading Confederate Monuments, is under contract with the University Press of Mississippi. She earned her PhD from the University of Connecticut in 2016.

Not suitable for children under age 13 (sensitive content).

90 minutes, including a 30 minute Q&A.

Customer Reviews

Based on 12 reviews
83%
(10)
8%
(1)
8%
(1)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
C
C.F. (Santa Monica, US)
An extraordinary conversation about women and race in America and so many other things…

This was really an amazing conversation. I have done several of these with Dr. Seger and they always have such a unique perspective on American history and literature. My educational background was in the sciences, and so I very much appreciate the various conversations that Dr. Seger has led on both great American literary artists, as well as certain racial events or time periods in American history. They seem as relevant today in many ways as they did when they first occurred.

B
Barbara Blonsky (Mount Laurel, US)
Excellent Presentation

Dr Seger very clearly loves this subject and provides a wonderfully entertaining and informative presentation. She brings small details and little known information to your attention which make this class a lot of fun. I highly recommend.

C
Consuelo Duroc-Danner (Dallas, US)

Guest did not leave comment

A
Anonymous (Larchmont, US)
Informative, engaging presentation!

Informative, engaging presentation on women writers, artists, & singers of the Harlem Renaissance. We had an opportunity to ask questions at the end, which inspired an enlightening discussion of the historical material and its relevance today.

B
Bev Slaughter (St Louis, US)
Informative and fun

Learned a lot and due to small group size, had a fabulous conversation afterward. Her remarks stirred childhood memories (I grew up in Harlem) and left me hungering for more information. Would be interesting to compare this time period to the present. She’d light on little known part of HERstory.

Customer Reviews

Based on 12 reviews
83%
(10)
8%
(1)
8%
(1)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
C
C.F. (Santa Monica, US)
An extraordinary conversation about women and race in America and so many other things…

This was really an amazing conversation. I have done several of these with Dr. Seger and they always have such a unique perspective on American history and literature. My educational background was in the sciences, and so I very much appreciate the various conversations that Dr. Seger has led on both great American literary artists, as well as certain racial events or time periods in American history. They seem as relevant today in many ways as they did when they first occurred.

B
Barbara Blonsky (Mount Laurel, US)
Excellent Presentation

Dr Seger very clearly loves this subject and provides a wonderfully entertaining and informative presentation. She brings small details and little known information to your attention which make this class a lot of fun. I highly recommend.

C
Consuelo Duroc-Danner (Dallas, US)

Guest did not leave comment

A
Anonymous (Larchmont, US)
Informative, engaging presentation!

Informative, engaging presentation on women writers, artists, & singers of the Harlem Renaissance. We had an opportunity to ask questions at the end, which inspired an enlightening discussion of the historical material and its relevance today.

B
Bev Slaughter (St Louis, US)
Informative and fun

Learned a lot and due to small group size, had a fabulous conversation afterward. Her remarks stirred childhood memories (I grew up in Harlem) and left me hungering for more information. Would be interesting to compare this time period to the present. She’d light on little known part of HERstory.