Author Toni Morrison’s The Origin of Others to Be Focus of Clifford Symposium
Will Nash, professor of American studies and English and American literatures and a symposium organizer, will immediately follow with the second keynote lecture, “Tending the Roots, Heeding the Call: Why We Must Read Toni Morrison Today.” Nash will discuss the importance that Morrison places on history as we look to the future. He will also look at her exploration of people’s fears to speak out during an escalation of racist thoughts and actions and how her work offers guidance toward a better understanding and mutual respect.
The first day of the symposium will conclude with a screening of The Foreigner’s Home, a documentary film that explores Morrison’s work through the 2006 exhibition by the same name that she guest-curated at the Louvre. Morrison invited renowned artists whose work also deals with the experience of cultural and social displacement to join her in a public conversation. The film expands upon that and offers exclusive and unreleased footage of the Nobel laureate in Paris in 2006 and at her home in New York state in 2015.
The film’s producers will attend the event to provide an introduction and to lead a post-screening discussion.
The symposium continues on Friday with a workshop on documentary filmmaking and the student forum. It closes with an arts performance based on an adaptation of Toni Morrison’s short story Recitatif. Middlebury faculty members Michole Biancosino, assistant professor of theatre; Christal Brown, chair of the dance department; and Matthew Taylor, assistant professor of music, created the performance. After its conclusion, they will discuss the challenges of staging this short story that explores the conflicted ways society deals with race and color.
Saturday’s activities include workshops and discussions on The Origin of Others as well as topics that have originated in the symposium sessions. Events wrap up with a second performance of Recitatif.
Published in 2017, The Origin of Others is based on Morrison’s 2016 Norton Lectures at Harvard University. In the text, she draws on her own life and novels, a wide range of American and African literature, and contemporary events.
The symposium is an annual event named after Nicholas Clifford, who taught history at the College from 1966 to 1993 and who, in his many years as a member of the faculty and administration, cultivated critical inquiry at Middlebury.
The full symposium schedule is available here. For more information, please contact Mari Price at mprice@middlebury.edu or 802-443-5403.