‘Don’t
Say Goodbye to the Pork-Pie Hat’:
Re-Evaluating
Larry Neal’s Creative and Critical Vision of the Black Aesthetic
19 and 20 of
October 2006
Brooklyn
College
2900 Bedford Avenue,
Brooklyn, NY
10am-5pm
Poet, playwright, and critical essayist Larry Neal (1937-1981) was one of the
leading voices of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, and a keen observer of
modern jazz and its place in African American politics and culture. As co-founder of the journal of black
musical expression, Cricket, editor
of the politically influential Liberator,
and contributor to other
important journals and magazines including Soulbook,
The Journal of Black Poetry, and Black Theater, Neal explored notions of
the “black
aesthetic,” asserting the various theoretical and political layers
comprising black cultural production and performance. Neal's work provides an early model of
critical interdisciplinarity, attesting to the interrelated nature of African
American music, drama, literature, and folklore. Scholars from a variety of fields will
examine Neal’s legacy as artist, activist, and critic, and his
contributions to our understanding of mid-20th century American art
and culture.
Don’t Say Goodbye to the Pork Pie Hat is sponsored by the Brooklyn College’s Institute for
Studies in American Music, Department of Africana Studies, Ethyle R. Wolfe
Institute for the Humanities, Office of Affirmative action, and Center for
Diversity and Multicultural Studies; and by Rutgers University’s English
Department.
Thursday
October 19th
11:00-11:45 am: Registration
12:00-1:45 pm
Opening Ceremonies
Welcoming Remarks: George
P. Cunningham, Chairperson, Africana Studies, Brooklyn
College
(CUNY)
Greetings:
Brooklyn
College, TBA
Evelyn
Neal
“Larry Neal: A Personal
Retrospective”: Mae G. Henderson, English & Comparative
Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill
2:00-3:45 pm
Performing Poetics: Larry Neal’s Aesthetic and Metaphysical
Universe
Aldon L. Nielsen, Department of
English, Pennsylvania State University
“Be Bop Ghost in the
Machine”
Mike Sell, Department of English, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
“Speaking
to Poppa Stoppa: Ghosts and Performances in Larry Neal's Theory of
“
Liberating Music: Larry Neal’s Soundscape of Revolutionary
Cultural Production
“Hoodo[o] Hollerin’ Bebop Ghosts: Jazz Culture
in the Work of Larry Neal”
W.S. Tkweme, Department of Pan-African Studies,
University of Louisville
“Black Boogaloo and Bebob Ghosts”
Frederick Vincent, Department of
Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley
“Suppose James Brown read Fanon’: Revolutionary Nationalism and the Funk of the Black Panthers”
6:00-8:00 pm: Dinner and Keynote
Address
Kimberly W. Benston, Department of English, Haverford
College
“‘Don’t Say
Goodbye to the Pork-Pie Hat’: Larry Neal, Past and Future”
Friday, October 20th
10:00-10:45 am: Coffee & Danish
11:00 am-12:30 pm
Shine On:
Black Arts, Political Innovation and Black Cultural Tradition
William J. Harris, Department of English, University of Kansas
“Larry Neal’s Folkloric
Frame of Mind”
Howard
Rambsy II, Department of English,
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
“Checking
Out Style: Larry Neal’s Recovery of Zora Neale Hurston and Ralph
Ellison”
12:45- 1:45pm Lunch
2:00-3:45 pm
Radical Motives of Music: Neal Sounds Out the
Political
Margo Natalie Crawford, English Department, Indiana University
“The Rhythm and Swing of Larry
Neal’s
Post-Double Conciousness Dream”
Salim Washington, Conservatory of Music, Brooklyn College
(CUNY)
“The Glorious Monster in the
Bell of a Horn: Musical Visions of Struggle and Freedom in Larry Neal's Black
Aesthetic”
Carter A. Mathes, Department of English, Rutgers University
“Sounds of Liberation: The
Aesthetic Contours of Neal’s Black
Radical Critique”
Institutional Foundations, Philosophical
Expansions
Esiaba Irobi, International Theatre/Performance Studies,
Ohio University
“Who is Afraid of Larry
Neal?”
James Smethurst,
Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts
“Larry
Neal, the Muntu Circle, and Black Arts Ideology”
Craig A Schiffert, Department of History, Howard
University
“New REsearch and a Reappraisal:
Larry Neal's Co-founding of the Black Arts REpertory Theatre/School (Harlem,
1965)”
6:00-7:00 pm
Eleanor Traylor, Department of English, Howard
University
“Reflections”
“Prospectives”
For further information please contact us at:
isam@brooklyn.cuny.edu
Tel: 718-951-5655
Fax: 718-951-4858
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