How do we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Frances E.W. Harper (1825-2025), the most prolific African American writer of the nineteenth century? As part of its year-long programming, the Center for Black Digital Research/#DigBlk, joined by Penn State’s Africana Research Center, will convene an in-person symposium on the week of her 200th birthday, September 19-21, 2025.
We invite you to save the date and respond to the CFP for “Frances E.W. Harper 200: Looking Back, Moving Forward,” which is meant to evoke her kinetic activism and extraordinary creativity across decades, genres, and movements.
Like other symposia hosted by #DigBlk, panelists receive honoraria and develop their papers into essays to be included in an edited collection submitted to UPenn’s “Black Print and Organizing in the Long Nineteenth Century” series. Symposium proposals of 250-300 words and a brief CV (no more than 5 pages) to be submitted through this form by August 15, 2024. Applicants will be notified by September 30, 2024. Please email digblk@psu.edu with any questions.
Key Dates:
- AUG. 15, 2024 Proposal Due. 250-300 words, brief CV.
- SEPT. 30, 2024 Responses
- SEPT. 19-21, 2025 Symposium held at Penn State University
“Life is made for earnest action!”
–Frances E.W. Harper, “Something To Do”
Harper was the most prolific African American writer of the nineteenth century. She wrote and published collections of poetry, short stories, serialized fiction, essays, and now canonical novel, Iola Leroy. Her writing is infused by her commitment and advocacy for Black women: as a leading abolitionist orator, suffragist, and as an activist in political movements including Colored Conventions, women’s rights, and temperance.
We invite those who seek to commemorate her life and work to contribute to the symposium’s theme. As we extend her legacy into the 21st century, we are motivated by her ceaseless efforts to abolish slavery, advocate for gender equality, and advance civil rights. We welcome participation from a wide range of inter/disciplinary perspectives including but not limited to religious, historical, literary, rhetorical, gender, visual and performance studies that explore Harper’s multifaceted life, work, and legacies.
Possible Topics:
- Harper’s Origins: Watkins family and free Black Baltimore
- Harper’s Philadelphia: activist networks, friendships and family, regional activism
- Harper’s Ohio: her teaching, Harper at Wilberforce, Harper and marriage/family, her Ohio networks, regional activism
- Harper’s larger abolitionist circuits, speaking and networks
- Temperance and Harper’s interracial coalitions
- Harper’s suffrage activism
- Harper in the Colored Conventions Movement
- Harper and Black Print culture in the nineteenth century: serialization, newspaper essays, open letters, writing embedded in newspapers
- Harper Historiography: reprint, recovery, reintroductions
- Harper and Memory: clubs named after her (and other Black women), monuments, history, art, performance, poetry
- Harper’s Canon: as poet, novelist, short story writer, essayist, orator/rhetorician
- Harper and Black feminism: women’s club movement, her relationships with other Black women intellectuals and organizations
- Harper, the Civil War, and Reconstruction: both her life and her literary production in these periods
- Travel, Talks, and Texts: mapping Harper and visualizations
- Harper in Unexpected Places: Harper’s travels to/work in unexpected places, teaching her/remembering her in unexpected places and communities
- New Perspectives in Harper Studies: reflecting on Harper’s historiographical journey from reprints to digital collections; Harper and contemporary activism, etc.
Compensation
Those selected to be symposium participants will receive a honoraria that can cover travel, accommodations, and per diem. Symposia hosted by #DigBlk culminates in edited collections (once reviewed and accepted) by UPenn Press. Participants commit to publishing accepted revised papers in what will be an exciting volume.
“But how will we honor her?…Will we appreciate the audacity of her taking pen to paper with the grace and eloquence of a poet? Will we understand the enduring danger and indignity of the anti-slavery lecture circuit? Will we see how she championed intersectional women’s rights – a human rights vision that rejected both racism and sexism – long before that became fashionable? Will we honor her for never forgetting the extent to which Black Americans suffered, through enslavement and its legacy of racism? Will we applaud her for being a model for us: writer, activist, mother, friend and more all at once? Honor her, [certainly] we must. Let’s have that conversation now about how.”
–Martha S. Jones
Harper Commemoration Events
We invite symposia participants and those planning Harper commemorative events to fill out this form to have your event included on the DigBlk calendar of events held globally in this 200th anniversary of Frances Harper’s birth!
Conveners
Sherita L. Johnson, Ph.D.
Director (incoming), Africana Research Center
Associate Professor, Department of English
Penn State University
Gabrielle Foreman
MacArthur Fellow, 2022
Founding Co-Director, Center for Black Digital Research/#DigBlk
Founding Director, The Colored Conventions Project
Professor of English, African American Studies, and History
The Paterno Family Chair of Liberal Arts
Penn State University
If you have any questions, please email us at digblk@psu.edu.