The English Department is pleased to announce a lecture by Mark Sanders of Emory University entitled "'being comes to ardent things': The Poetics and Politics of Change in the Poetry of Anne Spencer," Monday, January 26, at 5:00 pm in 100-104 McKenna Hall.
Mark A. Sanders is Professor of African American Studies and English at Emory University. He specializes in early twentieth-century American and African American literature and culture, more specifically, the connections between "mainstream" American modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. His research interests also include American and African American poetics, race theory, the African American novel, African American autobiography, and Afro-Cuban and Afro-Latino literature and culture. Professor Sanders teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century African American literature and culture, exploring issues of racial and cultural identity, citizenship, and freedom. He also teaches courses on Afro-Cuban literature and culture of the colonial, republican, and revolutionary eras.
Professor Sanders recently published A Black Soldier’s Story: The Narrative of Ricardo Batrell and the Cuban War of Independence, a translation of Batrell’s original memoir, Para la historia: Apuntes autobiograficos de la vida de Ricardo Batrell Oviedo, 1912. Professor Sanders is now working on a republication of the original for a Cuban audience. Sanders is also working on a collected volume of poetry by Anne Spencer.