Morrison Society conference will mix scholarly and social events

Honoring the first African-American woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize for Literature, the Fifth Biennial Conference of the Toni Morrison Society will be held in Charleston for three days with a whirlwind of events examining the concept of modernism in Morrison's work and its connection to the Gullah culture.

Highlighting the July 24-27 conference will be a tribute to Morrison led by Phylicia Rashad, the first African-American actress to win a Tony Award for Best Performance by a leading Actress in a Play (a 2004 revival of Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun").

"Toni Morrison and Modernism" is the title of the conference, which conference co-chairwoman Carolyn Denard, of Brown University, says is especially appropriate to Charleston because it is the largest port entry of enslaved Africans, and also the fact that this year celebrates the 200th anniversary of the banning of Transatlantic slave trade.

The College of Charleston will serve as host of the world-wide event and Carolyn Morales of the college's Office of Institutional Diversity serves as conference co-chairwoman. Featured will be a marathon of harbor cruises, jazz and spiritual music concerts. Also, each day, panel discussions will examine the tragic imperative of enslaved Africans to "make themselves new" in order to survive. Panels and topics are listed at www.tonimorrisonsociety.org.

Sponsored by the International Literary Society, the Morrison Society has approximately 600 members representing 12 countries including Japan, Australia, Egypt and China. Co-conference chairwoman Carolyn Denard, of Brown University, says the public is invited to major events.

"However, all the individual panels probably will not be open to the public due to lack of space, and also because this is primarily a conference for scholars," says Denard, chair of the board of the Toni Morrison Society, a component of the American Literature Association which represents a number of major authors. The Morrison Society's mission is that of supporting the teaching, reading and critical examination of Morrison's works.

For more on this story, see Sunday's Post and Courier.