Fielder to deliver 2022 Gryphon Lecture

Brigitte Fielder

Brigitte Fielder, associate professor in the College of Letters and Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will deliver the 2022 Gryphon Lecture on April 8. Sponsored annually by the Center for Children’s Books (CCB), the lecture features a leading scholar in the field of youth and literature, media, and culture.

In "Picturing Young, Gifted, and Black: Phillis Wheatley’s Image and the Creative Black Child," Fielder will discuss Phillis Wheatley, the first African American woman to publish a book of poetry. Kidnapped from her home in Senegambia by enslavers at the age of seven or eight, the poet was sold to the Wheatley family in Boston. At the age of thirteen or fourteen, she published her first poem, and at the age of twenty, she published Poems on Various Subjects.

According to Fielder, Wheatley was part of a full Black community. Her interlocutors included enslaved child artist Scipio Moorhead (who is believed to have created a portrait of her) and enslaved poet Jupiter Hammon (who wrote a poem to Wheatley in 1778).

"Wheatley is interesting to me as a scholar of early African American literature, and particularly as someone who focuses on Black women writers," she said. "Black people have always recognized her work's value and importance—from Jupiter Hammon's poem just a few years after the publication of Wheatley's collection of poetry, to discussions of Wheatley in the nineteenth-century Black press, to writing about her in African American children's literature from the nineteenth through the twenty-first century. This is part of what I'll talk about in the Gryphon Lecture."

Fielder is the author of Relative Races: Genealogies of Interracial Kinship in Nineteenth-Century America (Duke University Press, 2020) and coeditor of Against a Sharp White Background: Infrastructures of African American Print (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019). Her teaching interests include early African American literature; nineteenth-century U.S. literature; race, gender, and sexuality studies; children’s literature and childhood studies; and human-animal studies.

Tags:
Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

Gabriel joins academic affairs team

Gillian Gabriel joined the iSchool on June 3 as an office administrator - course scheduler. In this position, she will work with the Academic Affairs team to design the schedule and input it into Banner, work with Catalog Management and Section Scheduling (CMSS) to arrange classroom space, manage the final exam schedule, and coordinate with the bookstore on textbook orders.

Gillian Gabriel

Miller joins administrative support team

Alexis Miller joined the iSchool on June 4 as an office manager. In this position, she will provide support to the Assistant Dean for Student Affairs and assist with various student affairs activities.

Alexis Miller

CCB collaboration receives award from the Organization of American Historians

A collaborative project of the iSchool's Center for Children's Books (CCB) and the National Park Service (NPS) has been honored by the Organization of American Historians. The Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument, which features the Books to Parks website, received the Stanton-Horton Award, which recognizes "excellence in National Park Service historical efforts that make the NPS a leader in promoting public understanding of and engagement with American history."

The Watsons Go To Birmingham

Library Trends "Cultural Heritage and Digital Scholarship in China: Part II" now available

The School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is pleased to announce the publication of Library Trends 71 (4), edited by Lian J. Ruan and Shengping Xia. "Cultural Heritage and Digital Scholarship in China: Part II," explores the rich, diverse, and long history of China's cultural heritage and the innovative digital scholarship that is currently being utilized to study it. 

Introductory course teaches information science concepts through game design

As part of Teaching Associate Professor Judith Pintar's Introduction to Information Sciences (IS 101) course, students are tasked with creating board games that teach various aspects of information science targeted to particular audiences. The students presented their creations on April 19 at the Game Studies and Design Spring 2024 Showcase. In addition to the game demonstrations, the event featured posters and presentations by students and faculty.