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Session Submission Summary

Writing in/is Progress: Black Women's Biographical Studies from Start to Finish

Fri, October 31, 8:30 to 10:00am, Marriott St Louis Grand, Landmark 3

Session Submission Type: Panel

Description for Program

Rachel Afi Quinn will present from her paper titled, “Listening to Black Women's Lives: The Archive of Philippa Schuyler's World Travels in her Music.” Drawing from her feminist biography, Good Women Die: Re-Envisioning the Life of Philippa Duke Schuyler (1931-1967), Quinn proposes to counter the “tragic mulatto” trope emergent in previous accounts of her life. Quinn explores how Schuyler’s sound archive offers another layer to her biographical project. Her focus has been on the photographic and race yet her piano compositions reflect her transnationalism as well: one can hear African, Middle Eastern, and East Asian influences woven together, drawing on her extensive world travels.
In her paper, “Helen Dickens and Black Women’s Health Work,” Ameenah Shakir presents from her biographical study in-progress on Dr. Helen Dickens who had a national reputation as an activist physician that centered black women’s health work. This paper highlights aspects of Dickens establishment of community health clinics that were based on previous infectious disease models. Shakir employs the concept of embodiment to demonstrate Dickens’ evolution in the creation of black women’s health work as a form of activism. As such, she recasts biography from a popular genre to being grounded in a longer tradition of African American women’s historiography.
Tara T. Green in her paper, “She Asked Me Why I’m Here: Writing the Biography of Alice Dunbar-Nelson or Researching the Life of a Black Queer Respectable Activist,” will discuss the challenges and joys of writing about the life and work of Alice Dunbar-Nelson. Green will share what she had to consider in telling the “truth,” what sources she used to craft the biography, and what motivated her to keep writing over a ten-year period.
Stephanie Evans, author of Black Feminist Guide to Writing, will draw from her work as a respondent.

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