Naseeb Shaheen Memorial Lecture Series

About The Shaheen Memorial Lecture Series

The Shaheen Memorial Lecture Series was established after the death, in 2009, of Dr. Naseeb Shaheen, who was a professor in the English Department at the University of Memphis for many years. Dr. Shaheen wrote extensively about early modern literature, chiefly Shakespeare. His books on biblical references in Shakespeare's plays (1999, 2002) and Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1976) remain the definitive work in this field. He also published a two-volume Pictorial History of Ramallah (Palestine) (1992, 2006). In addition to his scholarly work, Dr. Shaheen was a noted philanthropist and collector of pre-King James English Bibles. The Shaheen Memorial Lecture Series is sponsored by the Department of English and the Marcus W. Orr Center for the Humanities.

The Fifteenth Annual Naseeb Shaheen Memorial Lecture

Fall 2024 Lecture Series

Ayesha Hardison // University of Indiana, Bloomington

Some Notes on the Literature of the Civil Rights Movement: Maya Angelou's Reconsideration of History
Thursday, October 24, 2024 // Maxine Smith University Center Memphis Room (UC 340)
Reception: 5:30pm // Lecture: 6:00pm
This event is jointly sponsored by the Department of English and the Marcus W. Orr Center for the Humanities.

Meeting with Graduate Students
Friday, October 25, 2024 // Patterson Hall 221
1:30pm

How might we understand history differently when it is documented by writers? This talk explores representations of the Civil Rights Movement and, more broadly, literary engagements with history through Maya Angelou’s writing practice. Reflecting on Angelou’s work as a memoirist as well as her turn to social expression products, Hardison contemplates Black female history making by tracing the nuances of memory, affect, and aesthetics.

Ayesha Hardison is the Susan D. Gubar chair and an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Indiana University, Bloomington. She is the author of Writing through Jane Crow: Race and Gender Politics in African American Literature (University of Virginia Press, 2014), is co-editor with Eve Dunbar of African American Literature in Transition: 1930-1940 (Cambridge University Press, 2022), and has published several book chapters as well as articles in African American Review and Meridians. Hardison has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Black Metropolis Research Consortium, National Humanities Center Summer Residency Program, and the Ford Foundation. She is director of the History of Black Writing (HBW) and co-editor of the multidisciplinary journal Women, Gender, and Families of Color.

Past Shaheen Lecturers

4/12/2024	Marjorie Garber, Harvard University "After 'After the Humanities'"
10/13/2022	Emily Lordi, Vanderbilt University "Bringing it Home: Whitney Houston's Black Creative Vision and Agency"
10/6/2022	Florence Dore, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "Modernism, Music, Memphis"
11/18/2021	Rob Nixon, Princeton University "Slow Violence and Environmental Justice in 2021"
10/3/2019	Stephanie Burt, Harvard University "Shipping Containers"
10/4/18	Hannibal Hamlin, Professor of English, Ohio State University "Seven Types of Allusion: Texts Talking with Texts from Shakespeare to the Present"
11/2/17	Yolanda Pierce, Professor and Dean, Howard University School of Divinity "I have shaken rivers out of my eyes: Black Poetry and Prophetic Rage"
10/20/16	William J. Maxwell, Professor of English and African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis "Born-Again, Seen-Again James Baldwin: State Surveillance, Afro-Pessimism, and the Literary History of Black Lives Matter."
10/22/15	Nicholas Watson, Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English, Harvard University "The Word of God in the Mother Tongue, or Why most of what we assume about the history of Bible translation is wrong."
10/2/14	Paul Stevens, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Early Modern Literature and Culture, University of Toronto "Churchill's War Horse: Children's Literature and the Pleasures of War"
11/21/13	Achsah Guibbory, Ann Whitney Olin Prof. of English, Barnard College "British Israelism: Three Centuries of a Forgotten History"
10/18/12	Katherine Bassard, Professor of English, Virginia Commonwealth University "Transforming Scriptures: African American Women Writers and the Bible"
11/10/11	Robert Alter, Professor of Hebrew Language and Comparative Literature, University of California at Berkeley "The King James Bible and the Question of Eloquence"
9/21/10	Debora Shuger, Distinguished Professor of English, UCLA "The Girls of Little Gidding: The Forgotten Masterpiece of Radical Feminism"

PAST SHAHEEN SYMPOSIA

10/26/17 "Conversations Across Concentrations"

10/14/16 "Reading Resistance: Bodies, Lessons, Movements"
10/16/15 "Keepin' it Real: The Languages of Authenticity"
9/26/14 "Producing Heroes"