{"id":2683,"date":"2021-11-09T11:39:02","date_gmt":"2021-11-09T16:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/history\/?p=2683"},"modified":"2025-05-26T11:18:48","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T15:18:48","slug":"event-on-11-10-when-black-writers-embrace-the-classical-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/history\/2021\/11\/09\/event-on-11-10-when-black-writers-embrace-the-classical-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Event on 11\/10 — When Black Writers Embrace the Classical Past"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The George C. Connor Professorship of American Literature, the SunTrust Chair of Excellence in the Humanities, the Africana Studies Program, and the Departments of English And Modern and Classical Languages and literatures Present<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Contra Nationis Natum:<\/h2>\n

When Black Writers Embrace the Classical Past<\/h2>\n
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Featuring<\/h5>\n

Dr. Jackie Murray, University of Kentucky<\/h3>\n

5:30 PM, Wednesday, November 10, 2021<\/h4>\n

Raccoon Mountain Room, UTC University Center<\/h4>\n

Masks must be worn inside all UTC facilities<\/em><\/p>\n

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At the dawn of the twentieth century, Thomas Dixon\u2019s \u201cReconstruction Trilogy\u201d of novels was wildly popular, as were the lynchings and racist terror they incited. Dixon adapted the storyline of the trilogy into a play that D.W. Griffith famously spun into cinematic gold in his epic film Birth of a Nation in 1915. Perhaps as much as any piece of Jim Crow legislation, the works of these two figures helped institutionalize and normalize a White supremacist vision of America. In this lecture, Dr. Jackie Murray looks at the reception of classical antiquity in the literature, theatre, and cinema of W.E.B. Du Bois, Charles Chesnutt, Kelly Miller, and Drusilla Dunjee Houston. In his or her own way, each of these early twentieth-century Black writers used the classical past to undermine the Reconstruction era\u2019s White supremacist collective memory, which Dixon and Griffith helped create.<\/p>\n

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Jackie Murray is Associate Professor of Classics in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of Kentucky. Her book Neikos and the Poetics of Controversy<\/em> is under contract with Harvard University Press<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Contact Aaron Shaheen at Aaron-Shaheen@utc.edu for more information<\/p>\n

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Contra Nationis Natum: When Black Writers Embrace the Classical Past; Featuring Dr. Jackie Murray, University of Kentucky; 5:30 PM, Wednesday, November 10, 2021; Raccoon Mountain Room, UTC University Center<\/p>\n

Continue Reading <\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":800,"featured_media":2684,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,83250],"tags":[5],"class_list":{"0":"post-2683","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-africana-studies","8":"category-events","9":"tag-events","10":"entry"},"yoast_head":"\nEvent on 11\/10 - When Black Writers Embrace the Classical Past - History Archive: Jul 2007 - Oct 2025<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/history\/2021\/11\/09\/event-on-11-10-when-black-writers-embrace-the-classical-past\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Event on 11\/10 - 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