The Department of African and African American Studies and the Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies at Pennsylvania State University solicit proposals from all disciplines for a conference on THE BLUES TRADITION: MEMORY, CRITICISM, AND PEDAGOGY.
This important and innovative conference will bring together Blues performers, scholars, educators, critics, and audiences for a series of lively exchanges on the meaning and future of this musical/intellectual tradition. It is a unique opportunity for students of the Blues to discuss the tradition's potential contribution to African American Studies, the humanities, the social sciences, the US and to the world.
Among the distinguished participants will be the following scholars/ artists and 30 other panelists:
Fruteland Jackson, Blues in the Schools Program- Chicago; David " Honeyboy" Edwards; Gloria Mills Edwards, Blues in the Schools Program- Houston; Julio Finn, Daphne Duval Harrison, University of Maryland Baltimore County; Sterling Plumpp, University of Illinois Chicago Circle; David Evans, University of Memphis; and William Eric Perkins, University of Pennsylvania.
The veteran Delta Bluesman David "Honeyboy" Edwards will both lecture and perform on July 1st. Born in the Delta around 1915, Edwards' friends and colleagues read like a list of the Blues Roundtable. Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Sunnyland Slim, Big Walter Horton, Little Walter Jacobs, and Robert Junior Lockwood. His 1998 autobiography, The World Don't Owe Me Nothing, is considered a classic rendering of African American life and the Blues in the 20th century.
A complete schedule will be posted at http//www.outreach.psu.edu/C&I/BluesTradition/ in early June.