POST-RACIAL AMERICA - HAS THE USA MOVED BEYOND THE RACE ISSUE?

«"The Waiting Arms of Missouri": Human Connections and Sheltered Lives in Welty's The Optimist's Daughter» ISABEL ALVES (UNIVERSIDADE DE TRÁS-OS-MONTES E ALTO DOURO)

Bearing in mind the symposium’s title “Post-Racial America – Has the USA Moved Beyond the Race Issue?”, and having at the center of my reflection Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter (1972), I will propose a reading of this novel based on the symbolic, silent, and scarce presence of Missouri, the black housekeeper of the Mckelva house. On one hand, her presence in the novel is rare and subsidiary; on the other hand, her presence signals and reinforces Laurel’s sheltered life and her need for human connections, showing, as Peggy Prenshaw suggests, that Welty truly believes in ‘the human connection between freely operating individuals who engage issues that directly affect their lives’. Attuned to the political and social codes of the racial South, the embraces between Laurel and Missouri are silent, but they are also a reinforcement of what Prenshaw designates as the ‘respectful listening to the position of the other’.

Demonstrating that Welty understands the relationship between nature and the community of man, I will underline the connection between the presence of Missouri and that of birds, an association which corroborates Welty’s predisposition to listen to the voice of nature. In the novel, the birds’ journeys intensify and anticipate the imminent flight Laurel is to take into another life, that of imagination, artistry and interior independence – a parallel road to the one Missouri may represent, for African Americans have always looked for alternative landscapes - literally and figuratively. Missouri’s symbolic closeness to birds may well indicate Welty’s comprehension of a collective and racially-based desire for flight and freedom.

ISABEL ALVES is Assistant Professor at the University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (UTAD). She specializes in Willa Cather and other nineteenth and twentieth-century American authors. She has published the book Fragmentos de Memória e Arte: Os Jardins na Ficção de Willa Cather (Lisboa: Colibri, 2006). She is currently working on American Nature Writing and Ecocriticism.

“Illinois: The Land that Made Abraham Lincoln” MARIA ZINA GONÇALVES DE ABREU (UNIVERSIDADE DA MADEIRA)

“That there are certain relationships between a man’s environment

and what he ultimately becomes is obvious.”

Paul M. Angle, Here I Lived (1971)

Abraham Lincoln’s birth and growth to adulthood were times contemporary to the frontier era of the region that became Illinois, one of the five states carved from the Old Northwest. Illinois’ early American settlers came mostly from the south. Most were migrants from Kentucky, which was the case of the Lincolns.

The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, they removed from Kentucky to Indiana, when Lincoln was eighth years old. In the spring of 1830, the Lincolns decided to leave Indiana and remove to the Sangamon River in Macon County, Illinois. A year later the young man, now alone, established himself in the village of New Salem in Sangamon County, where he settled until removing once again to Springfield, Illinois, in 1837. Here he lived until his departure to Washington, D.C. as president-elect in1861.

These were the formative years that made Abraham Lincoln a successful lawyer, politician and statesman, and shaped frontier Illinois and its society as found by the Portuguese Protestants who sought refuge in the towns of Springfield and Jacksonville from religious persecution in Madeira, whose communities amounted to ca 2000 people by the late 1850s.

My paper thus aims at drawing a picture of frontier Illinois, how it affected Lincoln and was affected by him, as well as the impact on the Portuguese exiles who settle there.

ZINA DE ABREU is Associate Professor at the Arts and Humanities Department of the University of Madeira where she teaches English and American Literature and Culture at undergraduate and post-graduate levels. She has a PhD degree in English Cultural Studies. Her doctoral dissertation is published by Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian with the title The Reformation of the Church of England: Protestantism and Political and Social Democratisation(2003). She also authored the book titled Sacred Feminine: from Prehistory to the Middle Ages (2007), several articles, and co-edited two volumes and a CD of international conferences proceedings.Doctor De Abreu is currently engaged in a research project on the case of exile emigration of persecuted Portuguese Protestants from Madeira to Illinois, U.S., in mid-19^th century, specifically speaking to the land that made Abraham Lincoln.

«“We Need to Write with Love": Welty's Political View During the Civil Rights Years» DIANA ALMEIDA (UNIVERSIDADE DE LISBOA)

“I think we need to write with love. Not in self-defense, not in hate, not in the mood of instruction, not in rebuttal, in any kind of militance, or in apology, but with love.”

“Must the Novelist Crusade?”

Eudora Welty’s photographs during the 1930s focus mainly on the Mississippi black communities, detailing their work, play, and daily interactions. Choosing not to stereotype her subjects, the artist captures images rich in narrative suggestions, presenting each individual’s joy of being alive, surviving during the Depression years that affected the South strongly.

The same humanist perspective is present in “The Demonstrators” (1966), a story that contrasts the ideologically charged newspaper narratives of violence among “niggers” with the turbulent intimacy of the segregated black community. Considering Welty’s traditional oblique approach, this text is bold at highlighting the power structures prevalent in the Southern states and the growing individual helplessness in the midst of the political turmoil.

Maintaining the neutral stance advocated in her essay “Must the Novelist Crusade?” (1965), the story is written “with love,” revealing “with honesty” the lives of its individual characters, seemingly trapped in a historical dead end. Despite the fact that the narrative refers to the contemporary context of its production, Welty asks the reader not to judge but to turn exegesis into a process of imaginative compassion.

DIANA ALMEIDA currently teaches North American Art at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon (FLUL). Her post-graduate project is entitled: “Bodily Figurations in the Works of Elizabeth Bishop, Luiza NetoJorge, Cindy Sherman and Helena Almeida”. She teaches creative writing in the museum (CCB - Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisboa), connecting literature and photography. Diana Almeida holds a Phd in American Literature and Culture: (The Contours of Light and Words: Storytelling and Photography in Eudora Welty’s Short Stories, FLUL, 2007) and an M.A. in American Literature and Culture (Raymond Carver: American Polaroids, FLUL, 2000). She has researched and published on short story and other arts. Photography: arodaemroda.blogsopt.com

“Not Quite White: Ethnicity or Race in Through a Portagee Gate" RUI AZEVEDO

Leo Pap has stated that the Portuguese who immigrated to the United States in the late 19^th and early 20^th century were initially treated as “colored” people. This was the result of how the Portuguese were identified by others, but also problematized how they came to identify themselves. The malleability of this ethnic and racial category led to a debate on whether the Portuguese should be considered a minority as late as 1973 in the Portuguese Congress in America. Accepting this status meant embracing the Portuguese as non-white, while most ambitioned to become American and join mainstream society. This paper takes its cue from Charles Reis Felix’s Through a Portagee Gate, and will look at how a second-generation Portuguese-American dealt with the classification of his racial/ethnic minority status and how this affected his mode of self-identification.
Rui Azevedo is a Portuguese-American who holds a BA degree in Government and International Relations from Clark University and has been teaching English at Universidade Lusófona since 2001. He is currently working on his PhD thesis on Portuguese immigrant autobiography where he is looking at questions of identity formation.

«"Yes, They Could!"; The Post-Identity Politics Hypothesis and the Election of 2008» TERESA BOTELHO (UNIVERSIDADE NOVA DE LISBOA)

The almost consensual reading of the Presidential Election of 2008 sees it as a symbolic transcendence, not only of racially induced electoral behavior, but of essentialized identity based politics. This paper interrogates the substance of these far-reaching interpretations of voting patterns, testing them against subsequent highly publicized episodes that seem to deconstruct and weaken these hypotheses, and highlight the enduring hold that identity politics still has on the national social and political fabric.

A more nuanced interpretation of status of the “race issue” will be suggested, drawing evidence from the demographics of new multi-racial and multi-ethnic groupings and from the popularization of performativity theories of identity and belonging, to map out possible future trends in cross identity public conversations and coalition formations.

TERESA BOTELHO (Tbotelho@mail.telepac.pt) is Assistant Professor of American Studies in the Department of Languages, Literature and Cultures of the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the New University of Lisbon, Portugal. Her research centers on Twentieth Century Drama, American Ethnic Studies especially Asian American Literature and Culture, and theories of identity and performativity. She has published essays on the drama of Tony Kushner, Tennessee Williams, Philip Kan Gotanda and David Henry Hwang, and on the work of Faye Myene Ng, Gish Jen, as well as Walter Mosley. She is currently also working on the relationship between science and drama and on Portuguese-American literature.

LUÍSA BRITO Maria Luísa Miranda de Castro e Brito é Mestre em Estudos Anglo-Portugueses com especialização em Estudos Americanos pela FCSH da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, tendo centrado a sua investigação na área da diplomacia cultural e nas relações culturais entre a América e a Europa no início da Guerra Fria. Presentemente é doutoranda em Estudos Americanos e, dando continuidade ao trabalho anteriormente realizado, a sua linha de investigação incidirá principlamente na relações transatlânticas no pós-Guerra Fria. Actualmente é professora titular no Ensino Secundário na Escola Secundária D. Manuel I de Beja, mas anteriormente esteve destacada no Instituto Politécnico de Beja onde, para além de funções docentes e de formação de professores, foi responsável pelos projectos de internacionalização da instituição, e pela implementação do processo de Bolonha.
"Welty’s Long Fiction and her Southern Feminine Voice" TERESA CASTILHO

With this paper I want to trace and critically examine two levels which, as they converge, inform and dominate Welty’s long fiction. Thus the point of departure of this paper is the fact that Welty brings to fiction a very particular vision of the South, where the writer’s region appears and glows through a reflection about a (Southern) feminine world. In addition we’ll discuss how Welty’s long fiction questions the present of Welty’s region as well as its relation with the past. Thus the paper will also proceed to conclude how Welty portrays the sensitivity and the emotions of her region.

"Can the Racial House Have a Room of Our Own?" ISABEL CALDEIRA, UNIVERSITY OF COIMBRA"

Emphasizing the social construction of race, and having in mind the historical flexibility of racial meanings and categories, I intend to assert the conflictual character of race at both the micro- and macro-social levels, and the irreducible political aspect of racial dynamics. As the US has always been an extremely “color-conscious” society, and racism is well imbedded in all social structures and institutions, it is hard to envision a post-racial America. However diverse movements, both intellectual and activist help us perceive a healthy asymmetry and fragmentation in American multiethnicity, which may learn the advantages of relational positionality.

Isabel Caldeira is Associate Professor of English and American Studies at the Faculty of Letters and Research Fellow of the Center for Social Studies, University of Coimbra. Her research fields are American Literature and Culture, African American Literature and Culture and comparative studies of African American literature and African literatures in Portuguese. She has published on Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Jean Toomer, Sherley Anne Williams, Gayl Jones, the Harlem poets and the Black Aesthetic poets, racism, the Angolan fictionist Pepetela and Cape Verdean poetry. She contributed to American Literature (Lisbon: Open University,1999), Translocal Modernisms: International Perspectives (Peter Lang, 2008), and Trans/Oceanic, Trans/American, Trans/lation: Issues in International American Studies (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), and is the editor of O Cânone nos Estudos Anglo-Americanos (Coimbra: GEAA and Ed. Minerva,1994), and Novas Histórias Literárias/New Literary Histories (Coimbra: MinervaCoimbra, 2004).

« "Plucking a thistle and planting a flower'"Lincoln's Purpose in Power» RICHARD CARWARDINE (UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD)

Just a few weeks before his death, in a meeting with Joshua Speed, one of his oldest friends, Abraham Lincoln remarked, ‘Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower when I thought a flower would grow.’

The larger philosophy captured in this simple sentiment suggests that Lincoln brought to his pursuit and use of power a strong ethical conviction, or moral purpose. This was grounded in an unconventional but increasingly evident religious faith. Equally, we should see this statement as a measure of the president’s political activism: Lincoln was an ambitious, enterprising, and determined wielder of power. Although he declared that he had not controlled events – rather, he said, they had controlled him – he was hardly the passive, reactive president represented in some historical portrayals.

My lecture will consider how these elements – Lincoln’s moral purpose and political purposefulness – revealed themselves in office.

            RICHARD CARWARDINE was born in Wales and educated at Oxford University. Since 2002 he has been Rhodes Professor of American History at Oxford University, where he is a Fellow of St Catherine’s College. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2006. His analytical biography of Abraham Lincoln won the Lincoln Prize in 2004 and was subsequently published in the United States as Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power (Knopf, 2006). His publications include Transatlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain and America 1790-1865 (1978) and Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (1993). Earlier this year he convened an international conference on Lincoln’s global legacy, to appear as The Global Lincoln (Oxford University Press, 2010). Next January he becomes President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

        ELSA MAURÍCIO CHILDS (UNIVERSIDADE DE LISBOA) is currently preparing her PhD at the University of Lisbon on the literary, pictorial and filmic references in the work of the American filmmaker Tim Burton. Her MA dissertation was on the signs of Western culture in the film Se7en, by David Fincher. She has written on the film Dogville, by Lars von Trier, and on the question of Utopia in the works of Ursula LeGuin. In addition she is a director and founding member of the educational project Casa Verdes Anos.

               JEFFREY CHILDS Professor Auxiliar na Universidade Aberta, onde lecciona na área de Estudos Ingleses e Americanos, Jeffrey Childs é também membro do Centro de Estudos Comparatistas da Universidade de Lisboa. Actualmente a sua investigação principal reside no âmbito da reestruturação da disciplina de Retórica, na medida em que esta possibilita uma articulação entre áreas do saber antigas (literatura, história, filosofia) e áreas de investigação e realização artística novas e multidisciplinares.

“Gran Torino: Change in the Neighborhood” JOSÉ DUARTE

Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino (2008) reveals a movie where different worlds, the old and the new, live side by side. The old world is represented by Walt Kowalski, a racist, beer-chugging retired Detroit autoworker that refers to his Asian neighbors as “gooks”. The new world is depicted by the Hmong people that live next door to Walt. As the viewer gets caught up between both worlds, we observe the progress made by Walt so as to learn and accept this new reality. This paper analyzes the way Walt acknowledges and also contributes to the reality surrounding him and the way he represents a country that needs to accept change not only within the neighborhood, but also at a national level. This is because Gran Torino is not only a movie about a car, symbolizing a powerful country and manhood, but it is also a movie that is the passing of a testimony of that symbol into the hands of those who represent the new world. This is why I also analyze how the movie represents a post-racial America and that the change begins in the neighborhood, first within Walt and then in the neighborhood, and finally, that Walt’s role is to embrace the common humanity not only of himself but also of his neighbors, and to see our neighbors as the people we love.

              PAULA ESCARAMEIA has been a member of the United Nations International Law Commission since 2002 (present mandate until 2011 – rank of Under Secretary General of the UN). She is a Full Professor of the Higher Institute for Social and Political Sciences of the Technical University of Lisbon, and a Visiting Professor of the Law School of the New University of Lisbon and of the Law School and the Institute for Political Studies of the Catholic University of Lisbon. She is also a member of the list of judges of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (The Hague).
               She has published six books (seventh to be published soon) and numerous articles in the field of Public International Law. She won several academic prizes and was awarded the Portuguese Order of Prince Henry the Navigator (Grand Officer) in 2002.
                She holds a SJD (PhD in Law) in Public International Law from Harvard Law School (1988) and an LLM (Master in Law) from the same school (1986). She has an Advanced Diploma in International Studies from The Johns Hopkins University (1984) and a degree in Law from the Catholic University of Lisbon (1983). She was granted scholarships by the Fulbright Commission, the Luso-American Foundation, the Gulbenkian Foundation, Harvard University and the MacArthur Foundation, among others.
               She has been teaching International Law in several Portuguese and foreign universities and has been a speaker in numerous conferences and seminars, such as at the UN in New York and Geneva, at the Portuguese Parliament, at the British Bar Association, at the International Law Association, at Princeton University, at Harvard University and at the Munich University. She is also a member of the International Commission of Jurists (Geneva).
               She was the legal counsellor of the Permanent Mission of Portugal to the United Nations from 1995 to 1998, representing Portugal in negotiations of numerous international conventions, in areas such as international terrorism, international crimes, Law of the Sea and the work of the International Law Commission. She was a member, from 1995, of the Portuguese delegation to the negotiations for the creation of an International Criminal Court and a member of the delegation to the 1^st Assembly of States-Parties of the Court.

   LUÍSA COSTA GOMES Luísa Costa Gomes, Portuguese writer, born in Lisbon, June 1954. She graduated in Philosophy and taught Philosophy and Psychology for ten years in Secondary School. She has published 5 collections of short stories, 6 novels, 10 plays , the libretto for White Raven, the 1998 opera by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson and a libretto for a cantata by Portuguese composer Luís Bragança Gil, that she has also staged. Her last novel, A Pirata, 2006, (The Pirate) is a fictional biography of the notorious Mary Read, who led an adventurous life in the Army in the Netherlands, later joined the crew of John Rackam and died in prison in 1721. Her latest book of stories is Setembro, 2007, (September), a collection much about writing. A consistent writer of comedy, Luísa Costa Gomes has often been commissioned to write plays and monologues for Theatre companies and solo actors. Life of Ramón, the fictional biography of XIII th. century Catalan philosopher Ramón Llull, has been translated into Catalan, Dutch and French (at Gallimard), and An Education for Sadness, her 1998 novel, has been translated into Spanish by Alianza Editorial. Several of her plays are translated into English. In the year 2000 she started the short story book form magazine Ficções, the only literary magazine solely dedicated to the short story in Portugal.

LETICIA LIESENFELD Actriz brasileira, trabalha desde 2001 em Portugal, onde fez a sua Licenciatura em Teatro. Integra diversos projectos de teatro e dança. Participa também em projectos ligados à promoção da leitura; em formações e espectáculos. Frequenta actualmente a pós-graduação em Comunicação e Arte, na universidade Nova de Lisboa.

'All Things Are Double': Eudora Welty's Prismatic View" MARIA ANTÓNIA LIMA (UNIVERSIDADE DE ÉVORA)

MARIA ANTÓNIA LIMA teaches American Gothic Literature at the University of Évora in Portugal; coordinates a Master Course in Contemporary Literary Creations; is a member of the International Gothic Association and of the American Studies group at the University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies (Ulices); is President of the Portuguese Association for Anglo-American Studies; has participated in some international gothic conferences; has published several essays in international and national literary magazines; wrote many literary reviews for two widely read Portuguese newspapers (O Independente e Público). Some publications include Tragic Emotion and Impersonality in Modern Poetry and a PhD thesis entitled Brown, Poe, Hawthorne and Melville: Terror in American Literature.

"A Slave with the Feet of a Portuguese Lady: Race Relations in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy” JOÃO DE MANCELOS (UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA PORTUGUESA / FUNDAÇÃO PARA A CIÊNCIA E TECNOLOGIA)

Set in Maryland, during the 1680s, A Mercy (2008), Toni Morrison’s most recent novel, approaches the themes of colonization, slavery and multi-ethnic relationship. Three female characters — Florens, an African girl “with the hands of a slave and the feet of a Portuguese lady”; Lina, the only survivor of a tribe decimated by diseases transmitted by Europeans; and Sorrow, the white daughter of a sea captain — live together in a farm owned by an Anglo-Dutch trader. In this multicultural community, they share their traumas and hopes, while trying to understand each other’s individual and ethnic differences. In my paper I intend to examine how these girls’ narratives: a) Allow readers to understand the beginnings of slavery and the roots of racial hatred; b) Reveal the dynamics of the relationship between three females belonging to different ethnic groups; c) Anticipate the dream but also the challenges Abraham Lincoln would face, two centuries later, when he declared that all slaves would be “then, thenceforward, and forever, free”; d) Echo problems related to the interaction with the Other still alive in contemporary USA. In order to approach these subjects, I will resort to a combination of literary and historical approaches, as well as to my own opinion.

JOÃO DE MANCELOS was born in Portugal in 1968. He holds a BA in Portuguese and English Studies (University of Aveiro, 1992), an MA in Anglo-American Studies (University of Coimbra, 1996), a PhD in American Literature (Catholic University, 2003), and attended two Summer courses in Creative Writing and in Film Studies (Luton University, UK, 2004 and 2005). He is a professor at the Portuguese Catholic University, in Viseu, Portugal, where he has taught American Literature and Literary Theory for fifteen years. Since 2006, he has been working on his postdoctoral project, in the field of Literary Studies. He wrote several books of poetry and short stories, a scientific book, and published a large number of essays and reviews on Literature. His main areas of interest and research include American Literature, Comparative Literature and Creative Writing.

EDGARDO MEDEIROS SILVA , UNIVERSIDADE TÉCNICA DE LISBOA is Assistant Professor at Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Políticas, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, where he currently teaches English for the Social Sciences at the undergraduate level. He completed his PhD in American Culture from Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisbona, with a doctoral thesis entitled The Political Jeremiad of Henry Adams (2007). He has also been a researcher with Centro de Estudos Anglísticos da Universidade de Lisboa since 2005. His research interests include American cultural history, American political history and American historiography. He is the author of a number articles and papers in those areas, such as “Manifest Destiny” in Henry Adams’ History of the United States (2007), “Henry Adams and the Question of Free Trade in Postbellum America (2007), “Historical Consciousness and the Auto/biographical in The Education of Henry Adams,” (2005) “Democracy – An American Novel – A Contextualized Reading” (2002), among others. His latest academic project focuses on the cultural relations between the Azores and the United States in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. «White Southern Manhood in Welty's "Death of a Traveling Salesman"» PAULA ELYSEU MESQUITA (UNIVERSIDADE DA BEIRA INTERIOR

“What I do in writing of any character is to try to enter the mind, heart, and skin of a human being who is not myself. Whether this happens to be a man or a woman, old or young, with skin black or white, the primary challenge lies in making the jump itself,” states Welty in her introduction to the volume Collected Stories (Harcourt [1980], xi”).

Over the decades, gender-based readings of Welty’s works seem to have delved deeper into problems of the status and roles of women in her fictional Southern communities, and of tensions in and out of wedlock and in the wider familial context. Arguably, because Welty excels at revealing the fantastic complexity of the domestic, the critical response has dealt more profusely with the problems, models, and dynamics of Southern womanhood in her works. However, Welty’s is a richly comprehensive social outlook, and it is patent everywhere in her work that she is as committed to and accomplished in her literary construction of male characters and networks of masculinity. In fact, her art reaches powerfully over many kinds of divides, bringing forth outstandingly vivid portrayals such as that of the murderer in “Where is the Voice Coming From?”

Adding to that gender-based body of criticism, then, this reading is concerned with depictions of white masculinity in Welty’s fictional South, and elaborates on the peculiar sociological context spawning such distinctive regional categories of white manhood as feature in her works: quintessential Southern gentlemen/aristocrats/patriarchs (Daniel Ponder, Clint McKelva), renegades of tradition and rascals (George Fairchild, Jamie Lockhart), rednecks (Troy Flavin), and several other types.

The essay, focusing on "Death of a Traveling Salesman," will address a core of intricate cultural specificities of the regional backdrop to Eudora’s largely character-driven plots -- elements of pride, prejudice, and stark inequity inextricable from any gender formulations in the context of the American South within and without her fiction.

PAULA ELYSEU MESQUITA holds a doctorate in American Literature from the University of Coimbra, Portugal. She is currently Assistant Professor at the University of Beira Interior and a research member of the American Studies section at Centro de Estudos Anglísticos, University of Lisbon, where she specializes in 20th-century southern studies and gender studies. She has published widely in international reviews, is the author of a book on Willa Cather and William Faulkner (Oporto, 2006), and editor of an international volume on Richard Wright (Lisbon, 2009). Occasionally she has published short translations, including Welty’s “Why I Live at the P.O.” (Lisbon, 2007). She is a member of the editorial board of Op. Cit, the journal of the Portuguese Association of Anglo-American Studies. In 2008 she was Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, University of Mississippi, while carrying out research on Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor and organizing the “Richard Wright at 100” International Conference in Portugal.

"Campus Novels and Race Difference at the University" FILIPA PALMA DOS REIS

“. . . in an important sense there is only one complete unblushing male in America: a young, married, white, urban, northern, heterosexual Protestant father of college education, fully employed, of good complexion, weight and height, and a recent record in sports. Every American male tends to look out upon the world from this perspective, constituting one sense in which we can speak of a common value system in America.”

This statement, by author Ervin Goffman, in 1963, not only excludes females from the onset, but also addresses several kinds of prejudice that interact with one another to complicate the Race issue with factors that go beyond mere physical difference. However, by the time Ervin Goffman published his “Dark Thoughts about the Self”, American universities were already sheltering and welcoming racial difference – and it can be argued they were, most likely, the first non-religious American institutions to do so. With resource to selected instances taken from campus fiction, this paper will briefly address the important role the Western model of university has had in the consistent dismantling of racial prejudice, which made possible our present outlook.

ELSA SERRA Contadora (narradora) de Histórias desde 1999.

Publicou o livro “Quero ser Ecritor – Manual de Escrita Criativa” (com Margarida Fonseca Santos), pela Oficina do Livro, Outubro de 2007 e dois livros infantis: O Senhor das Barbas Brancas, 2003; A Lua Ensonada, 2004. Trabalha desde 2001 com o DGLB – Direcção Geral do Livro e das Bibliotecas no programa de Itinerância de Promoção da Leitura. Frequenta o 3º ano da Licenciatura de Educação/Leitura na Universidade Aberta.

JOSÉ MÁRIO SILVA nasceu a 2 de Março de 1972, em Paris. Licenciado em Biologia pela Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa. Actualmente, é coordenador das páginas de Livros e crítico literário do semanário Expresso, além de colaborador da revista Ler. Publicou três livros: Nuvens & Labirintos (Gótica, 2001), Efeito Borboleta e outras histórias (Oficina do Livro, 2008) e Luz Indecisa (Oceanos, 2009). Escreve todos os dias sobre livros, literatura e o mundo editorial no blogue Bibliotecário de Babel (http://bibliotecariodebabel.com/).

JOSÉ PAULA SANTOS

Lisboeta desde que nasceu, licenciado em RP e Publicidade, teve sempre grande predisposição para as artes cénicas. A partir dos anos 80 estudou teatro no Conservatório Nacional, fundou um grupo de palhaços, fez teatro de rua e é a partir de 2004 contador de histórias profissional. Nunca ninguém lhe disse: “Porque no te callas?!” – antes pelo contrário! Conta por contar. Porque sim. Porque quer. Por amor. Para grandes e pequenos. Conta de tudo, criações novas com sabedoria antiga, para quem o quiser ouvir. Contará até que a voz lhe doa. Então, tomará pastilhas para a garganta, e continuará a contar!

"You Know How It Is With Them.” Representations of ‘Blackness’ in Welty’s “Powerhouse” and in Bowles’s “Sylvie Ann, the Boogie Man.” HERMÍNIA SOL (INSTITUTO POLITÉCNICO DE TOMAR)

Despite continuing efforts to overcome racial tension, blackness remains an issue of fierce debate in American society. As a social construct, blackness is affected by arbitrariness and context as these are central aspects in the production of meaning. Nevertheless, part of the controversy that surrounds this concept derives mostly from two distinctive traits. Firstly, its close connection with otherness and whiteness. And, secondly, the fact that blackness comprehends multiple meanings, multiple models and, thus, allows for multiple interpretative positions as well as multiple recontextualizations.

Therefore, borrowing from Tony Morrison and Henry Louis Gates Jr., this paper will look into two representations of blackness present in two short stories by two American writers – Eudora Welty and Paul Bowles --, written in two different contexts (both in terms of time and place). The trope of otherness will be of particular relevance here, seeing that the major characters under scrutiny are a black man (in “Powerhouse”) and a black woman (in “Sylvie Ann, The Boogie Man”). As a result, the issue of gender will also be subject of attention as it is hardly possible to dissociate it from that of race. As far as the two short stories to be discussed are concerned, this is even truer since both writers at stake have chosen to create fictional characters whose gender and racial identities do not match their own. Lastly, emphasis will be given to Welty’s and Bowles’s inclusion of stereotypical signifiers of blackness (in terms linguistic difference, physicality and disposition) in their narratives. However, this paper aims to put forward the idea that, rather than merely reproducing mainstream discourse and the markers of blackness prevalent in 1940s and 1950s America, both writers deliberately subvert them in order to reveal their characters’ subjectivity.

HERMÍNIA SOL is Assistant Lecturer at the Polytechnic Institute of Tomar, where she teaches English and Literatures in Portuguese. She obtained her BA in English and Portuguese Studies from the University of Coimbra (

Portugal

) and an MA Hons in Women’s Studies from the University of Limerick (

Ireland

). She is currently working on her PhD thesis on Paul Bowles at the University of Coimbra. Her research interests centre on the short fiction of Paul Bowles, on the relation between language and gender, and on film adaptation of literary works. She has written several articles and papers where she explores the themes mentioned above. «“Que Coisa Te Contarei Primeiro?” Narrativa: Literatura e Identidade» PAULO PIRES DO VALE Com a “recepção” que fazemos das estórias de outros, aprendemos a contar a nossa. E podemos mesmo aprender algo dela, antes desconhecido. Contamo-nos. Identificamo-nos narrativamente. E, neste sentido, o reconhecimento de si mesmo não é um acto ensimesmado nem imediato, mas sempre mediado e em relação a outrem. No coração da ipseidade está a trabalhar a diferença: o outro, o tempo, o inconsciente, o involuntário, a morte, a cultura, os códigos, a arte, a literatura... Em que medida é a identidade pessoal influenciada pela literatura? A dialéctica da identidade e da alteridade, presente na noção ricoeuriana de “identidade narrativa” que aqui vamos analisar, lembra que a história/estória pessoal mistura-se e cruza-se com a de outros e as criadas por outros, num emaranhamento que não é uma complicação secundária, mas a condição primeira e essencial da identidade. Define-nos como um “ser-emaranhado-nas-estórias” (Wilhem Schapp). Estas narrativas precedem e formam o horizonte de possibilidades onde somos lançados e nos movemos. Propõem modelos identitários que devemos interrogar. PAULO PIRES DO VALE é Licenciado e Mestre em Filosofia pela Universidade Nova de Lisboa, e Doutorando em Filosofia por essa mesma Universidade com a dissertação "A condição histórica da identidade pessoal em Paul Ricoeur". É professor na Universidade Católica Portuguesa e na Escola Superior de Educadores de Infância Maria Ulrich, onde coordena com o Prof.Doutor Jorge Crespo o Mestrado "A criança e a arte". Publicou Tudo é outra coisa. O desejo na Fenomenologia do Espírito de Hegel (Colibri, 2006) e diversos ensaios sobre Estética, Hermenêutica, Filosofia da Cultura e da Religião e textos para exposições colectivas e individuais de artistas como Ana Hatherly, Alberto Carneiro, Tomás Cunha Ferreira ou Ana Perez-Quiroga. É também comissário de conferências e exposições de arte contemporânea.

"Women Trashing Infrastructure: From Eudora Welty to Contemporary Cinema" PATRICIA YAEGER (UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN) This essay will compare "A Curtain of Green" with the film "Hancock" – focusing on race, gender, and destruction. It will also take a look at Welty's stories in the context of contemporary film and installation art and women's relation to infrastructure. PATRICIA YAEGER is Henry Simmons Frieze Collegiate Professor of English at the University of Michigan and editor of PMLA. She is the author of Honey-Mad Women: Emancipatory Strategies in Women's Writing, and the award-winning Dirt and Desire: Reconstructing Southern Women's Writing. She has edited "The Geography of Identity, Nationalisms and Sexualities, and Refiguring the Father. She is currently working on a project about detritus in 20C literature and visual culture--"Luminous Trash: American in an Age of Conspicuous Destruction" and a book entitled "Flannery O'Connor in Drag."

POST-RACIAL AMERICA - HAS THE USA MOVED BEYOND THE RACE ISSUE?

INFO: Post-Racial America International Symposium - Lisbon, 6-12 November 2009

THE INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM / SIMPÓSIO INTERNACIONAL

PROGRAM

ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS AND BIOS OF SPEAKERS