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3203 Southeast Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97202-8199

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The Division of Literature and Languages presents Emily Greenwood, Professor of the Classics and Comparative Literature at Harvard University.

This talk will analyse the tradition of reading and rewriting the Greek poet Sappho in African American Women’s literature from Anna Julia Cooper’s soul dialogue with Sappho in A Voice from the South (1892) to Harryette Mullen’s adaptation of Sappho’s lyrics in Muse and Drudge (1995). The Black Sappho is a cumulatively eccentric figure in which the multiple eccentricities of Black womanhood and Black feminist authorship encounter the queer Sappho of the classical tradition, complicated by layers of modern reception. Authors discussed include Anna Julia Cooper, Pauline Hopkins, Lorraine Hansberry, Fran Ross, Audre Lorde, and Harryette Mullen.

Free and open to the public.

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