Dr. McKinley Melton, Associate Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Rhodes College

This workshop will invite educators to examine ways that history, memory, and imagination serve as complement and complication in the work of Black writers.  We will explore how prominent writers articulate the importance of memory in shaping their creative work, not only with respect to how they engage the past, but also its ongoing significance in the present.  We will then consider illustrative works that draw parallels between key moments from the Civil War Era and the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20th Century.  Finally, bridging the day’s discussing with the lessons that they’ve learned during their week-long seminar educators will be invited to consider how they might develop lesson plans, classroom exercises, or assignments that enable students to consider the history, memory, and imagination in Black creative expression, with a focus on place broadly and Gettysburg specifically.