Join us at Uncle Tom: Distorted Nostalgia with author Cheryl Thompson 

Post Date:
Sep 17, 2021

We are pleased to invite the Queen’s community to join us virtually at for the 2021 kick-off event at Kingston WritersFest, Uncle Tom: Distorted Nostalgia on September 22 from 6 - 7 pm.  

In Uncle: Race, Nostalgia, and the Politics of Loyalty, Ryerson professor and author Cheryl Thompson turns a critical eye to the character of Uncle Tom, tracing the evolution of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s martyr slave from a literary character to racial trope. Through the lens of literature, politics and pop culture, Cheryl examines what has become an epithet hurled at African American men deemed, by other Black people, to have betrayed their race, and how such nostalgic reworkings of history shape how we see Black men.  

The library joins event sponsor Jennifer Surridge as the community partner in support of this important discussion. In honour of this event, we have curated a small resource list to highlight some of our complementary print, digital and video holdings. 

Queen’s University Archives is also author patron again this year to local award-winning poet and novelist Helen Humphreys , who will speak with nature inspired cultural curator, Tricia Knowles during Herbariums: Meditations on Forgotten Flora, on September 24 from 11 am to noon.    

Ken Hernden, University Archivist & Associate University Librarian, says, “We are proud to hold the records of Helen Humphreys, Diane Schoemperlen, and Merilyn Simonds.  We also preserve some of the records of several other authors featured recently at KWF as the archival repository for the Quarry Press, among other Canadian presses whose archives are at Queen’s University.” 

Tickets and descriptions of all the events are available on the Kingston WritersFest website. Many of this year’s events are free or by donation.  

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