This seminar series explores the multidisciplinary history of the book. It is designed for, and frequently features, NIU faculty and students.

"Mark the Systems of Revolving Worlds": African Voices, African American Literary Revolutions

Millions of Africans were abducted from their homes and forcibly trafficked to the Americas as part of the Transatlantic slave trade between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. Countless individual stories have been lost, but some powerful narratives endure and shape our understanding of African and African American history and culture. This seminar will not only explore race, religion, and enslavement from the perspective of two distinctly different African voices—cleric, Aḥmad b. al-Qāḍī b. Yūsuf b. Ibrāhīm al-Fulānī al-Timbuktāwī, and poet, Phillis Wheatley Peters—but also the creation, publication, and continuing engagement with their ideas and works.

Presenters:

• “Phillis Wheatley and African Voices from the Transatlantic Slave Trade” -- Aaron Spencer Fogleman, Board of Trustees Professor and Distinguished Research Professor, NIU Department of History.
• “Black to the Future: Experiencing Phyllis Wheatley through an Afrofuturist Lens” -- T. Ajewole Duckett, Director of Black Studies Program, NIU.
• “Arabic Manuscripts and Scriptwriting in Northwest Africa: An Analysis of al-Timbuktawi’s Hatk al-Sitr" -- Ismael Montana, Professor and Assistant Chair, NIU Department of History.
• “‘Snatch a Laurel’: The Literary Significance of Phillis Wheatley Peters” -- Melissa Adams-Campbell, Professor, NIU Department of English.

For further event details visit RBSC's History of Book Seminar website.