The Harlem Renaissance at 100: Perspectives and Possibilities

Leader:Dr. Donna Aza Weir-Soley, English

One of the enduring legacies of the Harlem Renaissance is its poetry, which often merged concerns for style and form with social and political protest in innovative ways. This workshop will prompt participants to write their own protest poetry, drawing inspiration from the work of Langston Hughes, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Claude McKay, and Angelina Weld Grimke as well as what historians call “the long civil rights movement.” Leading the workshop will be Donna Aza Weir-Soley, Associate Professor of English at FIU and author of such scholarly works as Eroticism, Spirituality, and Resistance in Black Women’s Writings and such poetry books as The Woman Who Knew and First Rain.

Leader: Octavia Yearwood

Often regarded as the signature artist of the Harlem Renaissance and the father of Black American art, Aaron Douglas illustrated and designed the dust jackets for many iconic books, including God’s Trombones, Home to Harlem, and The Blacker the Berry. Under the guidance of Miami-based artist, curator, and author Octavia Yearwood, participants will have the opportunity to create their own art based on Douglas’ striking visual imagery. All skill levels welcome.

Guide:Dr. Frank Luca, The Wolfsonian–FIU

See first editions of books by Harlem Renaissance authors, with their beautifully designed dust jackets created by leading artists of the 1920s and 30s, as well as other historically and culturally significant print materials. Frank Luca, Chief Librarian of The Wolfsonian–FIU, will guide viewings of these remarkable objects.

Moderator:Dr. Shawn Christian, English
Panelists:Dr. Heather Russell, English/Office of the Provost
Dr. Alexandra Cornelius, Center for Women’s and Gender Studies/History
Dr. Trina Sanders, Honors College/FIU Online
Christopher Norwood, J.D., of Hampton Art Lovers @ Historic Ward Rooming House Gallery

What is the value of studying the Harlem Renaissance 100 years later? What is its relevance today? Educators from four different disciplines, centered at both FIU and one of Miami’s leading cultural institutions, answer these questions by talking about how and why they incorporate the Harlem Renaissance into their own teaching and public outreach. Panelists will include Heather Russell, Professor of English at FIU; Alexandra Cornelius, Associate Teaching Professor of History and Director of FIU’s Center for Women’s and Gender Studies; Trina Sanders, Manager of Instructional Design at FIU Online and Lecturer at the Honors College; and Christopher Norwood, Founding Director of Hampton Art Lovers at the Historic Ward Rooming House. Shawn Christian, Associate Professor of English at FIU, will moderate.

Moderator:Dr. Andrew Strycharski, Film Studies Certificate Program/English

In this lyrical and poetic consideration of the life of revered Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, award-winning British filmmaker Isaac Julien invokes Hughes as a Black gay cultural icon, against an impressionistic, atmospheric setting that parallels a Harlem speakeasy of the 1920s with an 80s London nightclub. Extracts from Hughes’s poetry are interwoven with the work of cultural figures from the 1920s and beyond, including Black poets Essex Hemphill and Bruce Nugent, and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, constructing a lyrical and multilayered narrative. This screening will be introduced—and the conversation afterward moderated—by Andrew Strycharski, director of FIU’s Film Studies Certificate Program.

Presenter:Dr. Adrienne Brown, Associate Professor of English, U. of Chicago

As a technology for envisioning the city and its masses, the early skyscraper was a key site where Black people positioned themselves within the landscape of modernity. Adrienne Brown, author of The Black Skyscraper: Architecture and the Perception of Race and a University of Chicago associate professor, will address the skyscraper-centric images of Aaron Douglas, one of the most influential visual artists of the Harlem Renaissance. In a talk that ties together two current exhibitions—Aerial Vision, in our galleries, and The Harlem Renaissance, online—Brown will consider the multiple forms of urban belonging the skyscraper suggested to African American artists in the early 20th century.