May 13, 2022

9:00am PT/ 12:00pm ET

Welcome & Thanks & Logistics, 30min

• Ianna Hawkins Owen (Boston University)

• Kianna Middleton (UC San Diego)

• Tala Khanmalek (CSU Fullerton)

9:30am PT/ 12:30pm ET

Experimental Session: How We Read Together: Gayl Jones in Community, 45min

Moderator: Amari Mitchell (Rutgers University)

• Salvador Ayala, Ashley Codner, Angel Dye, Diana Molina, Ivana Onubogu, Bria Paige, + Sophie Ziner (Rutgers University Gayl Jones Reading Group)

(30 MIN BREAK)

11:00am PT/ 2:00pm ET 

Panel: South & Central America in Jones’s Work 90min
Moderator: Tala Khanmalek

• John Mundell (UC Berkeley), 

  • “Love Letters from Palmares”

• Esmeralda Arrizon-Palomera (UPenn), 

  • ““I don’t know nothing about that sanctuary movement … but I do know where they’s this mission school run by this Carmelite Nun”: Black Feminist Thought, Central America, and the Politics of Coalition in Gayl Jones’s Mosquito”

• Janet Arelis Quezada (independent), 

  • “Taking a ride in Nadine's Truck: Gayl Jones' Mosquito”

• Cassie Osei (University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign), 

  • “Gayl Jones' Afro-Brazil: Critical Commitments and Interventions in Brazilian History”

(HOUR BREAK)

1:30pm PT/ 4:30pm ET

Keynote: Critical Roundtable 120min
Moderators: Owen, Middleton, Khanmalek

• Therí A. Pickens (Bates College)

• Darieck Scott (UC Berkeley)

• Rebecca Wanzo (Washington University in St. Louis)

• Joanne Lipson Freed (Oakland University)

May 14, 2022

9:00am PT/ 12:00pm ET

Panel: Disability + Mad Studies, 90min
Moderator: Kianna Middleton

• Ra Malika Imhotep (UC Berkeley) , 

  • “the hermit-woman takes a lover: quiet-crazy intimacies in/with the poetry of gayl jones”

• La Marr Jurelle Bruce (University of Maryland, College Park), 

  • “The Blood-Stained Bed”

• Leon Hilton (Brown University), 

  • “Asylum”

• Chasia Elzina Jeffries (UC Irvine), 

  • “Who Wants to Know: Epistemological Storytelling & the Mad Black Feminine in Gayl Jones’s Mosquito”

(30 MIN BREAK)

11:00am PT/ 2:00pm ET 

Panel: Pedagogies, Canonicities, Forms, 90min
Moderator: Roderick Ferguson (Yale University)

• Autumn Womack (Princeton University), 

  • Title TBA

• Kirin Wachter-Grene (School of the Art Institute of Chicago), 

  • “Eva's Man's Unspeakable Risk”

• Almah Rice (Independent), 

  • “Postcards from Elsewhere: Mail Art, Bibliomancy, and Rumors of Resurrection”

• Erin Soros (Cornell University), 

  • “I Mean Hard Crazy: Over and Ever in Eva's Man”

(HOUR BREAK)

1:30pm PT/ 4:30pm ET

Keynote: Creative Dialogue, 120min 
Introductions: Owen, Middleton, Khanmalek

• Crystal Wilkinson (University of Kentucky)

• Alexis Pauline Gumbs (Independent)

(30 MIN BREAK)

4:00pm PT/ 7:00pm ET

Experimental Session: “Lightning Talks” 25-45min
Moderator: Bias Collins (UC San Diego)

• first come, first serve multi-genre attendee share (5min each)

May 15, 2022

9:00am PT/ 12:00pm ET

Panel: Jones’s Genders and Sexualities, 90min
Moderator: Ianna Hawkins Owen

• Brittney Edmonds (University of Wisconsin, Madison), 

  • “Black Sincerity: The Slipped Yoke of Black Feminist Irony” 

• Megan Maxine Williams (Purdue University), 

  • “‘I Feel Like an Egg Sucked Hollow and Then Filled with Raw Oysters’: A Black Feminist and Gastronomic Theorizing of Transgressive Sexuality in Gayl Jones’ Eva’s Man”

• Caroline H. Yang (UMass Amherst), 

  • “"You're not even a real human woman": Nonrecognition and Black Feminism in Gayl Jones's The Healing”

• Calen Firedancing (Independent), 

  • “All These Women in One Woman: Gender Possibility in the Silences of Fugitive Disguises and Spiritual Transitions in Gayl Jones’ Palmares”

(30 MIN BREAK)

11:00am PT/ 2:00pm ET 

Panel: Silences, Oral Traditions, Archives, 90min
Moderator: Derrais Carter (University of Arizona)

• Tara Betts (Northwestern), 

  • “The Radical Poetics of Gayl Jones: Finding Deep Down Voices”

• Clara Jimenez (UC Berkeley), 

  • “Sound and Silence: Examining Voice, Movement, and Interpersonal Dynamics in Gayl Jones’ White Rat”

• Emily Moore (University College London), 

  • “"That Kiss Was Full of Teeth": Ambivalence and Imperfect Resistance in Gayl Jones's Eva's Man and Charles Mingus's "The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady"”

• Anna Ziering (UConn), 

  • “I Write Down Whatever”: Archives, Speech, and the Abject in Gayl Jones’s “Asylum”

(HOUR BREAK)

1:30pm PT/ 4:30pm ET

Keynote: Working With Jones, 120min
Moderator: Erica Edwards (Rutgers University)

• Deborah McDowell (University of Virginia)

• Cheryl L. Johnson (Miami University)

• Nettie Jones (Author and Educator)