Saturday, 7 January, 12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., 6A, WSCC

A special session

Presiding: Gino Pellegrini, Pierce Coll.

Speakers: Barbara Clare Foley, Rutgers Univ., Newark; Gino Pellegrini; Charles Scruggs, Univ. of Arizona; Belinda Wheeler, Paine Coll.

Session Description:

This roundtable will focus on the 2011 edition of Jean Toomer’s Cane, edited by Rudolph Byrd and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and in particular on the editors’ provocative new thesis that Toomer was a Negro who chose to pass for white. Presenters will confront, examine, and discuss Byrd and Gates’s thesis.