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Thematic seminar—“Reading Social Justice: The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards”

The Cleveland Humanities Collaborative will host a themed seminar titled “Reading Social Justice: The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards” June 10–14 at Case Western Reserve University. The seminar is sponsored jointly by the Cleveland Humanities Collaborative, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, Writers House at CWRU, Cuyahoga Community College and the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities.

The seminar will use the 2019 winning authors of the Anisfield-Wolf book awards as a platform for dialogue and developing strategies for using Anisfield-Wolf texts in pedagogy and educational outreach. In addition to discussing how these texts engage race/ethnicity and history, seminar participants will consider how different genres—poetry, fiction and non-fiction—contribute to how we teach and have productive dialogue on our history and complex social issues.

The Anisfield-Wolf book awards recipients for 2019 are:

  • Andrew Delbanco for The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War (nonfiction);
  • Tommy Orange for There There (fiction)
  • Tracy K. Smith for Wade in the Water (poetry); and
  • Sonia Sanchez for lifetime achievement.

Faculty, staff and PhD students at northeastern Ohio universities and full-time staff and faculty from regional educational, arts and culture institutions are eligible to participate in the seminar.

View the full seminar description and instructions for application.