Special Projects

The Spring 2021 Issue of World Literature Today

The issue, which launched digitally on March 29, commemorates the centennial of the massacre while also emphasizing the current state of African American multicultural vitality in the 21st century, anchored in Oklahoma but rippling out on a global scale. Writers from Oklahoma, the United States, and beyond are among the contributuors to the issue. Attend the launch event at Fulton Street Books in Tulsa on Saturday, April 10, at 5pm!

Work by several Greenwood Art Project artists is also featured in the issue.

List of Contributors

Joy Harjo
Patricia Smith
Jewell Parker Rhodes
Tracy K. Smith
Minna Salami
Quraysh Ali Lansana
Rilla Askew
Karlos K. Hill
Kalenda Eaton
Candace G. Wiley
Crystal Z Campbell
Clemonce Heard
Laurie Thomas
Jasmine Elizabeth Smith
Lindsey Claire Smith
Marie Casimir (web exclusive)
Leslie Kraus (web exclusive)

Greenwood Art Project artists:
Crystal Z Campbell
Ebony Iman Dallas
Jimmy Friday
Yielbonzie Johnson
Alexander Tamahn

plus artwork by recent Tulsa Artist Fellow
Florine Démosthène

About World Literature Today

The University of Oklahoma is home to the highly acclaimed international literary magazine World Literature Today, established in 1927. One of the few magazines anywhere to cover literature and culture on a global scale, WLT has won nearly two dozen national awards in recent years for its international coverage and beautiful design. In the manner of a campus humanities center, WLT also sponsors programs that bring internationally recognized writers to Oklahoma to interact with the OU community: the $50,000 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the $35,000 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature, and the Puterbaugh Lit Fest. The offices of WLT also support the professional development of students interested in publishing careers and international studies by sponsoring a magazine publishing class, internships, student advisory board, a minor in editing and publishing, and The Aster, OU’s student-edited literary magazine. WLT impacts over a thousand students a year through conferences, courses, internships, scholarships, and grants. The activity of WLT as a campus humanities center, in turn, enriches the magazine. The synergy among WLT’s authors, professional editors, humanities faculty, and student editors brings fresh ideas and new energy to the magazine—and keeps WLT at the cutting edge of cultural developments and important global issues.

AFAM/ENGL/JMC 4970/5970

This Presidential Dream Course is an interdisciplinary exploration of the facts of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, the conditions in media and culture that led to it, and our contemporary engagement with that history. Team-taught by Dr. Karlos Hill (AFAM), Dr. Meta Carstarphen (Journalism), Prof. Rilla Askew (English), and Dr. John Stewart (Digital Learning), this course will offer students an innovative, multiperspective, and cross-disciplinary understanding of the Tulsa Race Massacre and its aftermath. The course will conclude with a multimedia digital humanities project in which the students engage with and synthesize the history, culture, impacts of media, and their own creative work.

AFAM 3333
Dr. Kalenda Eaton

This course will explore black western lives through history, literature, film, and contemporary popular culture. We will discuss black migration and settlement in Oklahoma and move to the wider American West. The early experiences of African Americans in the West include expeditions, chattel slavery, cowboy culture, homesteading, the creation of all-black towns, postwar migrations, the Civil Rights movement, urbanism, entrepreneurship, and more. The final exam will be a digital project focused on place and region.

EDS 5943
Dr. Mirelsie Velázquez

This graduate seminar will examine the history of schools and schooling as it pertains to communities of color in Oklahoma, and the role that the evolving racial politics of the 20th century had in erasing their participation from historical accounts. The semester usually begins with a thorough discussion of the Tulsa Race Massacre to frame the overall course.
 

Arguing over America, 1917–2001

HIST 3673
Dr. Ben Keppel

This course examines how Americans argued over the nature of contemporary American society and culture, especially as applied to minority groups, from World War I until 9/11.
 

African American History through Reconstruction

HIST 3743
Dr. Ben Keppel

This course traces the history of African Americans from their African origins to the end of the Reconstruction of the southern United States in 1877.

Choreographed by Marie Casimir & J’aime Griffith
Dramaturgy by Leslie Kraus
Co-sponsored by the OU School of Dance

I Dream of Greenwood is a dance inspired by the personal accounts of survivors of the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, as told to historian and activist Eddie Faye Gates and featured in her book Riot on Greenwood. The dance will move through the dreamscapes of the children who inherited both the rich legacy of a thriving community and the trauma of one of the worst single acts of racial violence in American history. Through their eyes we hope to relive, remember, and restore.

10-11am | April 9, 2021 | Online | Register for the symposium to attend

Video production by Scissortail Media
Audio and sound engineering by Andriotis Music & Audio

This program is made possible, in part, by the Norman Arts Council Grant Program.

Click below to download the curriculum packet for participating high schools:

The Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing will host a reading group on the book Tulsa 1921: Reporting a Massacre, by Randy Krehbiel. The group will be organized and led by Ajia Meux, a doctoral student from the Gaylord College of Journalism & Mass Communications, and Drs. Devin McCarthy and Michael Barnes, Institute postdoctoral fellows. Because of social-distancing concerns, the group will meet biweekly during the spring of 2021. Participants will receive complimentary copies of the book. Spaces are limited. For more information or to register, please email flourish@ou.edu.