Thinking Black Intellectuals: February 5-6, 2010, University of Rochester

If you're anywhere near western NY the first weekend of February, check out the Thinking Black Intellectuals conference at the University of Rochester. Here's the schedule of events. And here's a brief description of the conference from Jeffrey Tucker, who'll be delivering a version of the talk he gave last fall at Fredonia:

UR’s Frederick Douglass Institute for African & African-American Studies (FDI) will hold a conference entitled "Thinking Black Intellectuals" featuring some of today’s most important scholars in Africana Studies. The conference is free and open to the public; it is co-sponsored by UR’s Humanities Project and South Atlantic Quarterly (Duke Univ.), which is publishing a special issue on which the conference presentations will be based.

Be there or be square!

Start Spreading the News: Jeffrey Tucker on Race, Science Fiction, and Delany @Fredonia

I'm pleased to announce that the planet's foremost Samuel Delany authority will be speaking on my campus tomorrow afternoon. Jeffrey Tucker of the University of Rochester's English department has something new to say on the subjects of his fantastic 2004 study A Sense of Wonder: Samuel R. Delany, Race, Identity, and Difference. In "The Necessity of Models, of Alternatives: Samuel Delany's Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand," Tucker starts with two questions: 1) "How does one define science fiction (SF)?" and 2) "What difference does race makes to SF?" and ends by arguing that "Stars in My Pocket can be shown to be participating in the tradition of African-American literature and demonstrating the difference that race--both Delany’s own identity and the social phenomenon that has structured so much of the American experience--makes to the author’s conception of SF and its potential as a tool for critical analysis." To find out how he gets from point A to point B, come on over to room S-121 of the Williams Center Thursday, 10/8/09, at 4:30! This is a preview of an essay that will appear in a special issue of SAQ entitled "Thinking Black Intellectuals" that he's co-editing with Grant Farred, so be there or be square!

[Cross-posted at sf@SF.]

[Update 1 (4:30 pm): Here's official announcement from SUNY Fredonia.]