Antiracism: Eighteenth-Century Intertexts in Marlon James’ Fiction and Antiracist pedagogy

Cassander Smith (U of Alabama), Sheri-Marie Harrison (U of Missouri), Rebecca Barr (Jesus College, Cambridge), and Kerry Sinanan (University of Texas at San Antonio) will offer a roundtable discussion on Marlon James’ *The Book of Night Women* (2009) and its 18th-century intertexts as a follow-up workshop to Professor Sinanan’s September 20 conversation with Professor Honoreé Fannone Jeffers. In this workshop, panelists will discuss how Jeffers’ work has brought to our attention the need to think more about periodicity and legacies of slavery, and about how all of this relates to anti-racist pedagogy as we focus on what James does with the 18th-century archive.

Readings will include Harrison’s chapter on James, “Creative Rewritings of Early Caribbean Texts,” in *Caribbean Literature in Transition* Volume 1 (Cambridge University Press). Further readings to be announced.

This roundtable panel will be followed by an interactive pedagogy workshop and discussion. Hosted by the UMD Center for Literary & Comparative Studies as part of their yearlong series, “Antiracism: Communities + Collaborations.”