Linfield College students will present original research papers at the third annual Fall Literature Conference Friday, Oct. 3, hosted by the English Department.
Sarah Wagner-McCoy of Reed College will present the keynote address, “How We Know and What We Read: African-American Literature in the Archives,” at noon in the Pioneer Reading Room.
Wagner-McCoy will discuss her discovery of unpublished stories by Charles Chesnutt, one of the first professional African-American authors in the 19th century, and share how her findings transform our understanding of American literature. Her talk engages this year’s PLACE theme, “How do we know?” from a literary and historical perspective, asking how we construct our knowledge about an author’s work and its place in a larger historical narrative — a place that is often based not on what an author wrote, but on what we chose to read.
Wagner-McCoy teaches American and Transatlantic literature at Reed College and is editing a new collection of Charles Chesnutt’s short stories.
For more information, contact Daniel Pollack-Pelzer, assistant professor of English, 503-883-2484, dpollac@linfield.edu.
