Coe College features guest author Rebecca Entel

Date: 3/25/2015
Time: 4:30 PM TO 5:30 PM

1220 First Avenue NE
Cedar Rapids, IA 52402

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Event Description: Scholar and author Rebecca Entel will explore passages of "troubled literacy" in a Coe College presentation entitled "The Value of that Bit of Paper - The Trope of Troubled Literacy in Slave Narratives." The lecture will be held on Wednesday, March 25, beginning at 4:30 p.m. in Kesler Lecture Hall in Hickok Hall. It is free and open to the public. Some of the most famous moments in antebellum slave narratives are those that describe slaves' paths to learning to read and write. Literary scholars and historians have understandably celebrated the relationship between literacy and emancipation. Slave narratives also contain many moments, however, in which reading and writing are more ambiguous acts. In this talk, Entel will explore passages of "troubled literacy," which she defines as moments in which literacy signals something other than freedom. These moments, in which literacy is characterized as complicated and troubling, arise in the most well-known slave narratives, such as "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" and "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass," as well as lesser-known texts such as William Grime's "Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave." Entel is an associate professor of English and creative writing at Cornell College, where she teaches courses in American literature, multicultural literature and creative writing.


Directions:
Coe College Kesler Lecture Hall in Hickok Hall

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