Celebrating Nikki Giovanni at the Center

Yesterday, the Publishing Triangle, in collaboration with the bookstore Bureau of General Services-Queer Division (BGSQD), held a marvelous tribute to open Black History Month: "OutSpoken: A Tribute to Nikki Giovanni," honoring the essential poet, writer, teacher, intellectual, publisher, militant, and activist, who passed away last December 9, 2024, at 81. Nikki Giovanni gained public acclaim as one of the most important women and feminist thinkers and voices in the Black Arts Movement of the late 60s and early 70s, publishing her first two volumes of poetry, Black Thought, Black Feeling and Black Judgment, in 1968. She would go on to published scores more books, including poetry, essays, children's books, and more, including spoken word albums, and receive a vast array of honors for her work, including an American Book Award, the Ruth Lilly Prize, the Sankofa Freedom Award, and countless others.  She also became an influential teacher, at Virginia Tech, where she taught for 35 years, and at Cave Canem (how I wished I'd been there when she was teaching there!).

 

Hosted by the incomparable Emanuel Xavier, the event featured readings by leading queer poets Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Reginald Harris, Darrel Alejandro Holnes, JP Howard & UGBA, and a Drag Queen Story Hour performance by none other than Harmonica Sunbeam. (The last time she participated in a Drag Queen Story Hour at the Center, as she reminded those present, back in March 2023, the event, which also featured New York State Attorney General Tish James, occasioned a minor media firestorm. There were no such disturbances on this night.) The readers each selected a poem by Giovanni, who has become iconic for several generations of poets, particularly Black queer and activist poets and other artists, and shared their own work, each before a beautiful still image of Giovanni during various stages of her life. Each aspect of this event would have made Giovanni feel truly loved and honored. "OutSpoken" also interspersed clips of readings by and interviews with Giovanni, bringing her actual voice into the room. 

A video clip of Nikki
Giovanni reading her work

Having taught her poetry once again last fall as part of my Black Arts Movement course, I was curious to see if anyone--or rather felt it likely that no one--was going to read some of her most rousing and incendiary early poems, particularly "The True Import of Present Dialogue, Black vs. Negro (For Peppe, Who Will Ultimately Judge Our Efforts," which is to say, the poem that begins "N****r / can you kill...." No one did, of course--and I want to say that Giovanni even left the poem out of her Selected Poems and Collected Poems, though I may be wrong on both accounts. My students this past semester, like students the prior time I taught this course, and like my own young self when I first read "The True Import," found that poem shocking, electrifying, disturbing, and yet so relevant, even decades later, for successive current moments. Giovanni wrote a follow-up poem, "My Poem," in which she basically says that she was already paying a price--political harassment, isolation, and so on--for writing "The True Import," but that, nevertheless, nothing would or will stop the revolution. 

In some ways she was right, while in other ways, the Civil Rights and Black Arts Movements did not achieve the goals many of its leading figures hoped for, though revolutions--cultural, political, social, psychic, if not economic--did occur and continue to resonate, and Giovanni, through her words, actions and life, was one of the people who made these transformations possible. Reggie Harris made a point in his remarks to note how Nikki lowkey affirmatively responded to a query about her partner and wife, now widow, Virginia Fowler, which was an effective and thoughtful way, I thought, to broach how Giovanni approached the subject matter of queerness and queer sexuality. Sex and love--for she is one of the great American poets on and of love--appear throughout her work, and her approach to queer desire and love increasingly appear in later work.

A few photos from the event--enjoy! (I would have posted a video of UGBA performing but unfortunately the video button here isn't working.)

Host Emanuel Xavier

Reggie Harris

 

Samiya Bashir

JP Howard

Cheryl Boyce-Taylor

Darrel Alejandro Holnes

UGBA

The one & only
Harmonica Sunbeam

Fire & Ink IV: Witness

Over the span of four days a week ago Detroit hosted Fire & Ink IV: Witness, the fourth national gathering of black GLBT (LGBTIQA+) writers and activists. The inaugural Fire & Ink took place in 2002, and this year's conference, which focused on the theme of "witnessing," embodied Fire & Ink's vision of serving as an "influential supporter and advocate for GLBT writers of African descent," and its mission of sponsoring regular forums focused on black GLBT writing; advocating for black GLBT works to be included in libraries, academic curricula and bookstores; and organizing workshops that nurture GLBT writers of African descent and foster our writing. I have not verified the attendance figures with the conference's organizers, Lisa C. Moore (President); Steven G. Fullwood (Vice President); Reggie Harris; Anthony R. G. Hardaway; Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz; and Steven J. "Lula-Bell" Fields, about many people attended, but many of the workshops, performances and screenings were packed, and I know that writers came to the Motor City from all corners of the US as well as from across the globe.

The view from my hotel window

This was my second time participating in Fire & Ink. The first one occurred in Chicago just before I arrived to teach at Northwestern, and I did not know about the second one, so it was not until the 2009 event in Austin, Texas that I had an opportunity to attend. That gathering, like this one, left me feeling incredibly invigorated about the future of black LGBTIQA writing, while also providing an opportunity to catch up with writers and artists I had not seen in a long time, and to meet and experience the work of new ones. As with the Detroit gathering, I wished after Austin that it were possible to have Fire & Ink occur annually or biennially, as the mission statement posits as a goal, but the realities of organizing and fundraising, particularly for an organization without limitless resources, and that strives to provide scholarships and support for its attendees, mean that the conferences occur when they can. I am grateful that I have been able to attend at least two of them.

Jack Waters, Skyping in for the Q&A
after the Jason and Shirley screening

The conference's lineup of workshops and panels began Thursday evening and concluded on Sunday. I unfortunately had to miss the final day because of Monday teaching responsibilities, but to the extent that I could, I tried to sample a little of everything. Among the highlights for me were Reggie Harris's Thursday afternoon workshop on "The Black Body," which included an array of useful exercises that not only disarmed and united everyone in the room, but also sparked candid conversations. Reggie interspersed his thoughts and questions with readings of poetry and prose that felt perfectly appropriate for the topic. Another highlight were the screenings that Ernest Hardy and Tisa Bryant hosted.

An edible handout from Samiya
Bashir's M A P S performance

I caught several screenings, including Stephen Winter's new film, Jason and Shirley (2015), starring Jack Waters and Sarah Schulman, and playing until October 27 at MoMA. I originally thought Winter had remade in fictional form Shirley Clarke's disturbing original 1967 documentary, Portrait of Jason, starring the eponymous Jason Holliday, but Winter instead tried to imagine what Clarke had not depicted, including her own selfish manipulation of her star, as well as Jason's torment and wily resistance, and Clarke's lover Carl Lee's emotionally brutal intervention. The film, despite its brevity, was wrenching, with a strong performance by Schulman and an unforgettable one by Jack Waters, who spoke briefly about the film and took questions via Skype after the screening. (I will try to post a fuller review if I can find a free moment.) Robert Phillipson's short documentary Tain't Nobody's Bizness: Queer Blues Divas of the 1920s, narrated by Jewelle Gomez, was also a gem I am glad I did not miss. Despite my belief that I had a fairly extensive knowledge of the subject, I learned quite a bit from Phillipson's documentary, as my in-the-dark note-taking will attest. I left wanting to know more particularly about Gladys Bentley, a heroine (as were the film's other figures) if there ever were one.

Samiya in peformance, stage right

Another film that Ernest and Tisa screened, Arthur Jafa's Dreams Are Colder than Death (2014), was a particular treat since it was not clear whether Jafa would agree to release the film, as earlier versions had been leaked and were circulating. Ernest and Tisa made sure that this color-corrected version was secure, and it was a visual and sonic feast. Jafa's aim, as I understand it, was to explore the current post-utopian moment created by the fading ideals of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous March on Washington "I Have a Dream" speech through arresting imagery, a futuristic soundtrack, and the voices of leading scholars and artists, and veteran black activists, including Fred Moten, Saidiya Hartman, Kathleen Cleaver, Arthur Fielder, Charles Burnett, Wangechi Mutu, and others. Jafa's, Hans Charles and Malik Hassan Sayeed's cinematography and Melvin Gibbs' score were enthralling, but I did not find the collage of voices, brilliant as they were, especially illuminating or fresh, and the near absence of prominent out LGBTIQA heads was glaring, as was the heteronormative presentation of sex work as a proxy for black sexual liberation. Perhaps I misread or misunderstood the role of the nude female strippers in the film, but this felt a bit retrograde especially in light of the complexities of black sexualities going back several hundreds years, let alone today. I was glad to have had the opportunity to see Jafa's film, and I hope someone takes up the thread but flips the script a bit more.

Jewelle Gomez, talking about
the documentary Tain't Nobody's
Bizness

Topping off Friday's events, I went to see Samiya Bashir perform M A P S: a cartography in progress, a section of a larger piece based on the great Somali writer Nuruddin Farah's highly regarded novel Maps, but refracted through Samiya's imaginative lens to become, as she describes it, "a poetry of emergence" that "resists a resolution" of the novel's child protagonist's key question about desire, in the process charting a trajectory that crisscrossed themes of family, sexuality and diaspora. On Saturday afternoon I split my time between two different panels, one of which was titled "Multiplying Personalities: The Writer Witnessing Self and the Many Characters We Create," comprising G. Winston James, Ana-Maurine Lara, Charles Rice-Gonzalez, and Marvin K. White, which was also a very diasporic panel. All four speakers, with Glen moderating, offered compelling commentary about their own work and processes, and satisfactory replies to the audience's queries. The second panel I popped into was "Dig: Queer Archaeologies," at which Jonathan Bailey, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Lisa C. Moore, Zaneli Muholi, and Julia Roxanne Wallace each spoke persuasively about the richness of the black queer archive(s).

Reggie Harris, leading his workshop
on "The Black Body"

My notebook nearly bursting with jottings, I head to main event, which was the keynote lecture by acclaimed writer Randall Kenan. The recipient of numerous awards; a professor of English at the University of North Carolina; and author of the novel A Visitation of Spirits; the story collection Let the Dead Bury Their Dead; and two works of nonfiction, Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century and The Fire This Time, Randall delivered a powerful, sometimes circuitous and in the end quite effective speech on the theme of witnessing, beginning by recourse to a critique of Roland Emmerich's financial and aesthetic debacle of a film about the 1969 Stonewall Uprising. What he stressed was something that was threaded throughout the conference's very reason for existence, which is to say, the importance of the work that everyone in the audience was undertaking in terms of bearing witness to our present and past, as well as imagining a viable future for black LGBTIQA people to come. An apt counterpoint came later that evening when Jewelle Gomez's Waiting for Giovanni, a two-act dream play that imagined a split second--yes!--in the mind of the great James Baldwin as he contemplated the publication of his landmark second novel amid the socially and politically fraught landscape, particularly after the murder of Emmett Till and in the course of the surging US Civil Rights movement. It bore witness in some of the very ways that Randall spoke about.

Reggie introducing Randall Kenan

I was not just a spectator, however. At the Austin event I gave a presentation on translating black LGBTIQA authors, and I reprised that this year through a workshop under the new title "Translating Black LGBTQ Writing: Expanding the Global Conversation," since the need for learning about and connecting with black people across the globe has grown even more important in light of the Black Lives Matter movement and in the wake of the challenges we face all over the globe, particularly in the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East. This time I had a few more facts about the paucity of translation in the US in general, and particularly of black and LGBTIQA authors of African descent to share. It also felt different to speak of translation as a practice having published a book in this area, and I hope by the next Fire & Ink, if I am around and able to attend it, to have more, including a book by a non-Anglophone LGBTIQA author to share with attendees. The conversation with the audience went very well, and I was able to meet a longtime hero as well as younger translators who were very interested in taking up this work.

Randall Kenan, delivering the keynote

A week or two before arriving in Detroit, several writers realized there would a critical mass of people working in innovative forms at the event, so Tisa and Samiya organized a panel for Saturday morning that also included Duriel Harris, Alexis DeVeaux, Rosamond S. King, and me. We each chose different ways to introduce ourselves (I perhaps ill advisedly read the very beginning of my short story "Blues," which only gives a glimpse of what is to come, rather than the ending, before speaking about how I viewed this and my other work, so I am not sure that I made the best case for what my work in Counternarratives or elsewhere sought to do), before a passionate and often illuminating series of presentations and discussions ensued. I believe the entire panel presentation was recorded and will become a podcast at the Los Angeles Review of Books' website, so that when that is available, I'll post a link on this blog if I can remember to do so.

Ernest Hardy, Duriel Harris,
and Tisa Bryant

Two final things were touches you probably would not find--or that I would not--at other conferences. These included an altar room the organizers established to honor both deceased predecessors as well as living figures who could not be present. Many were the faces and tongues that had blazed the path that made Fire & Ink possible, and which now filled that room. Another wonderful touch was the literary stretches, held from 7-8 am, that Rev. Marvin K. White led. I was never out of my room in time to bend myself into blissful pretzels that early, but I heard they were very enjoyable. As for the hotel, the Crowne Plaza Hotel Downtown, which sat right across the street from the Cobo Center, where the conference took place, I can't rave or rage about it. The view from my room was as picturesque as one could ever imagine in Detroit, but the room itself I found it passable. One day a too-early visit from the cleaning staff person, which I declined, led to my room being left untouched for a day. OK, I can deal with that. I extremely fortunate had no encounters with the bedbugs that at least two guests reported, or the roaches that others have cited online. Thank the gods and ancestors for small favors, and thank Fire & Ink's organizers and all its attendees for an amazing conference!

Fire & Ink President Lisa C. Moore

The group portrait

Rickey Laurentiis

The cast from the staged reading
of Gomez's staged reading

Lambda Literary Awards + Lambda Literary Review Interview

Gloria Steinem, presenting the
Pioneer Award to Rita Mae Brown

This past Monday, the Lambda Literary Foundation held its 27th Lambda Literary Awards, honoring some of the best of the previous year's LGBTIQ writing. The ceremony, mc'd by comedian Kate Clinton, was held in the Great Hall at the Cooper Union, and included performances by Toshi Reagon, who dedicated her songs to the late Octavia Butler, and Lauren Patten of the musical version of Alison Bechdel's marvelous graphic novel, Fun Home. Though I did not attend, I followed the social media tweets and posts about it, experiencing the excitement of the presenters, award finalists and recipients, and friends attending vicariously.

NY Times Opinion columnist Charles
Blow, accepting the Lambda Literary
Award in Bisexual Nonfiction

Author Alexis De Veaux accepting
the Lambda Literary Award in
Lesbian Fiction for Yabo

Chief among the honorees were foundational lesbian author Rita Mae Brown, who received the Pioneer Award, and filmmaker and writer John Waters, who received the Lambda Trustee's Award for Excellence in Literature. Other winners in categories that ranged from Bisexual Fiction to Lesbian Erotica to Transgender Non-Fiction to LGBT Studies include the late poet Vincent Woodard, a Cave Canem graduate fellow, whose academic study Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism within US Slave Culture, edited by Justin A. Joyce and Dwight McBride (NYU Press), took the scholarly prize; young playwright Robert O'Hara in the Drama category for his play Bootycandy (Samuel French); and New York Times Opinion page columnist Charles Blow, in the Bisexual Nonfiction category, for his memoir Fire Shut Up In My Bones (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

Additionally, Alethia Banks and Virginie Eubanks, with Barbara Smith, were honored in the Lesbian Memoir/Biography category for Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith (SUNY Press); Alexis De Veaux received the Lesbian General Fiction for her superb novel Yabo (Red Bone Press), which I enjoyed tremendously; and, in the talent-filled Gay Poetry category, Danez Smith received the award for his exceptional debut collection, [insert] boy (YesYes Books), which I was delighted to select last winter for my Volta Best of 2014 list.

Danez Smith, accepting the Lambda
Literary Award for Gay Poetry

You can find the complete list of Lambda Literary winners and finalists here, and more photos of the event here! It looks like it was so much fun I sincerely hope to attend the event one of these future years!

***

The Lambda Literary Review--and Reggie Harris in particular--conducted a short email interview with me, titled "John Keene: On Hidden Histories and Why Writing Official Narratives is Queer" that posted two days ago. Reggie takes a somewhat different tact from other recent conversations, asking questions specifically about the queer aspects of Counternarratives. I deeply appreciate the opportunity to talk about the book, so thank you Reggie (and thanks also to William Johnson at Lambda)!

Below are two excerpts. Please do peep the entire interview too!

Can form itself be queer?The answer, I think, is yes. If form pushes against and destabilizes usual norms and conventions, then it would be queer, no? The stories in Counternarratives trouble contemporary narrative conventions in American fiction, in part through an emphasis on storytelling in itself; through a play with structure, genre and voice; and through the queerness of the characters themselves. Nevertheless, the stories all are—at another level, I trust—accessible and readable.

and

Why did you feature 20^th-century queer writers Langston Hughes and Mário de Andrade in two of the stories—and why include sex scenes?Hughes and Andrade are heroes of mine. Towering modernist figures in their respective countries, both were of African descent, both displayed multiple talents, and both are now widely though not uncontroversially understood to have been gay, so I wanted to offer glimpses at moments in each man’s life, particularly beyond their youth. In the case of both, a public narrative arose that elided their queerness. With Hughes, we saw this with the furor, sparked in part by the Hughes estate, around Isaac Julien’s 1988 film Looking for Langston, and later in Hughes’ biographer Arnold Rampersad’s suggestion that Hughes was “asexual.” In Brazil, with Andrade’s life, a similar storyline that downplays his queerness has developed. There are so many clues in each man’s work, as well as in their biographies, letters, etc. Also, as scholar Robert F. Reid-Pharr has suggested in Hughes’ case (and this could be the same for Andrade), and as the CUNY Lost and Found Series of pamphlets exemplify, there are still archival troves that have yet to be examined. I should add that in both cases, their poems provoked me to write about them, and for both, I also wanted to make the sex(uality) a reality.

Easy Art Salon, featuring Erica Doyle and Reggie Harris

This past Sunday, I had the opportunity to participate once again in ongoing Easy Art Salon series, hosted at the beautiful Brooklyn home of scholar and writer Robert Reid-Pharr. Instead of reading I served as curator, and invited award-winning poets R. Erica Doyle and Reginald Harris, both of whom have new books out this year, to read and talk about their work before an intimate audience. One of the hallmarks of the series is its laid-back feel, and it was an increasingly warm and muggy evening so everyone was probably a bit more relaxed than usual, but both poets brought their own special heat and the event to a lively crescendo.

Erica read first, from her first full collection Proxy (Belladonna Press, 2013), and led us into a world bracketed by 9/11 and loss, and animated by the politics of desire and sex. Erica is a brilliant storyteller, and drew upon her narrative skills in creating a poetic portrait of a life in and out of crisis. Reggie read from Autogeography, his second book, which won this past year's Cave Canem/Northwestern University Press Second Book Prize. A map of a self or selves, Reggie's poems guided us, as Erica superbly put it during the Q&A, like thread through a needle into his distinctive vision. As part of the event, artist Ricardo Osmondo Francis exhibited selected works, all of which were for sale, at $100 and under.

Afterwards, the reading turned into a little party, a great way to close out a beautiful Sunday evening of poetry and art.

The readers, Reginald Harris and Erica Doyle
(your truly at left in the striped shirt)
(photo by David Barclay Moore)

Reggie watching as Erica reads from Proxy

Two members of the audience (Mark at right)

The audience

More members of the audience
(Robert at right, in the salmon shirt)

Erica watching as Reggie reads

Artist Ricardo Osmondo Francis
with some of his artwork

Stonewall Day + Congrats to Reggie H. + OBAMACARE #WIN! + Sullivan Back at U.Va. + Euro 2012

What a day! First, it's Stonewall Day; on June 28, 1969, the multi-day uprising in New York's Greenwich Village that marked a turning point in the burgeoning gay rights movement began. In today's Huffington Post, Scott G. Brown, one of the oldest surviving veteran of the event, offers some thoughts on what happened and guides readers toward his memoir, Confessions and Diaries of a New York Veteran of the Greenwich Village Stonewall Inn Raid of June 28, 1969: Souvenirs.  I have not read it but I intend to. Scott is black and gay, and approvingly quotes Edmund White's delightful memoir City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and 1970s, to underline the reality of that landmark event: "And it wasn't all those crew-neck white boys in The Hamptons and The Pines who changed things, but rather the black kids and Puerto Rican transvestites who came down to the Village on the Subway, the 'A-Trainers,' who made the difference!" As the children would say, "Yes, ma'am huntee!" Happy Stonewall Uprising Day, and do seek out Mr. Brown's book if you're so motivated.

***

Reggie H. (overjoyed)

I often mention Mr. Reggie H. on here, as he is a dear friend and brother/brotha writer and the only human being I know who is on top of everything. He is. He knows all kinds of things, intellectual, political, gossipy and otherwise, can be bitingly funny, but rarely if ever says a bad thing about anyone. He reps for Baltimore and Maryland (a state in which we have ancestors in common, his more recent than mine.) He also does his thing at Poets House, blogs at Noctuary, keeps lots of poets on their toes, advocates for and works with some of our societies most vital people, librarians, and listens politely to all my BS. He even comments on this blog from time to time (thank you!). And Mr. Reginald Harris Jr. is now the winner of the 2012 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Second Book Prize! His first, moving book 10 Tongues (Three Conditions Press, 2003) is one I urge you to familiarize yourself with; his second, titled Autogeography, is forthcoming next year, and on his blog he features one of the poems from it, about which I will say only that when I first saw it, I thought: "He's got it--down." He does. And will soon have a new, wonderful book of poems to show for it. Congratulations, Reggie!

***

President Obama
(thinking: "Whoo,
these Repubs
are going to
be salty tonight!")

As the morning unfolded and I was preparing the final stages of clearing out my apartment and waiting for UPS to come collect more boxes--which did not happen well into the sweltering evening here in Chicago--I heard the news that the United States Supreme Court had voted 5-4 to uphold the Affordable Care Act, the Rube Goldberg-style, neoliberal, Heritage Foundation-birthed insurance reform program that became the signature piece of legislation President Barack Obama and the Congressional Democrats passed during the last 4 years. Faulty as the legislation is, it possesses many major benefits for a large swath of Americans, and will result in an increasing push towards universal care in a way not foreseeable before its passage. I am not a lawyer so I cannot ascertain all the angles on the majority opinion, which conservative Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote, but it appears that he originally was going to side with the other four right-wing justices (Antonin Scalia, who gave a Scalimbaughish rant the other day in his dissent against the striking down of 3 of 4 provisions of Arizona's draconian anti-immigrant law, SB 1070; Clarence Thomas; Samuel Alito; and Anthony Kennedy, often though to be a "swing vote") who deemed the law "invalid."

Instead, having declared unworkable the argument that the Commerce Clause gives the government the power to impose the Affordable Care Act's Individual Mandate, decided to vote with the four more moderate-to-liberal justices (Ruth Bader Ginsberg; Stephen Breyer, whom I enjoy hearing lecture, his sing-songy voice like a lullaby; Sonia Sotomayor, whose visage makes me smile with pleasure that she was Obama's first SCOTUS pick; and Elena Kagan) to uphold nearly all the provisions of the law, which he affirmed as Constitutional under Congress's power to impose taxes. The only constraint was a provision, signed by 7 justices, arguing that Congress could not cancel out all federal funding to states if they refused to augment the ACA's provisions on Medicaid expansion. A blow against the Commerce clause, an affirmation of Congress's power to tax, a limit on federal power in relation to funding in the states, and a green light for insurance companies, hospital corporations, medical insurance providers, and all private businesses involved in the still-expanding health care sector.

It was also an unambiguous victory for President Obama and the Democrats, made possible by one of the least likely of agents, Roberts, and it enraged conservative idealogues, from Republican President candidate Mitt Romney, who implemented a very similar prototype in Massachusetts when he was governor there, to a number of members of the Republican Congressional Congress, who spoke in testerical flights of rhetorical about "freedom" and so forth, to Republican icons like Sarah Palin, who claimed that it proved the President had "lied." Of course they are all aware that Republicans had championed the "mandate" only a few years ago; Romney was captured on camera praising it in Massachusetts in 2006. The entire plan was hardly the "socialist" threat conservatives had made it out to be, hatched as it was by the Heritage Foundation, but in many of its provisions, it does point towards the possibility of much better, universal, affordable care of the kind that is available throughout most of the industrialized world.

Some of its provisions are excellent: no coverage denial based on pre-existing conditions; young people can stay on their parents' health care much longer; a stricter limit on profits collected as overhead from premiums; Medicare and Medicaid expansion; subsidies to buy healthcare; many incentive-based pilot programs that could be far-reachingly positive in their effects; federal deficit-lowering mechanisms; and so forth. Single-payer health care would be optimal, and Medicare-for-All or a Public Option would be the next best thing, but for now, the ACA does much good, despite its problems, and it is still far better than what existed before its enactment, which doesn't even really go into effect until 2014. (Republicans, including Romney, who was for it before he was against it, have vowed to repeal it, to deny its components funding, and, as South Carolina's junior Senator, the Tea Party epigone Jim DeMint urged today, simply to nullify it, as that state's politicians were fond of doing before the US Civil War.)

When I heard the news on NPR, confirmed by online sources, I felt a brief moment of elation such as I hadn't felt about this administration and Congress, and their actions, in a long time. I also felt--and I admit this is a bit sentimental, melodramatic, and ridiculous, but bear with me--a bit of that starry promise that was so palpable the night Barack Obama was elected in 2008, and I wandered among the throngs of people in downtown Chicago, in front of the Art Institute of Chicago and onto the periphery of Grant Park, and everything seemed possible, people of all backgrounds, ages, life trajectories, milled about, tears in their eyes, drums beating in their ears, awaiting the President-elect, his wife and his two daughters, knowing that we had, at least for a day, made a point about the disastrous slog of the previous eight years.  So much seemed possible that night; health care and insurance reform, at least in my eyes, was one of the more pedestrian, though important, eventualities that would mark Obama's tenure. Ending the wars, prosecuting the Wall Street criminals, rolling back those budget-busting Bush tax cuts, and so much more seemed far more important.

During the campaign, Barack Obama did promise he would enact health care and insurance reform. Nearly all of his Democratic and even some of his Republican predecessors, going back to Harry S. Truman (Missourian!) had attempted to do so, but run up against one abatgis or another. Lyndon Johnson did, however, succeed with Medicare and Medicaid. But in his first term, Barack Obama and the Congressional Democrats pulled it off. It is imperfect, but it is a crucial start, and as such strikes terror into the hearts of the Randroid types who want to dissassemble everything and hand it over to private agents who'll benefit even more than the private agents already feasting on the ACA's promised bounty.  More importantly, though, ACA, or Obamacare, is helping millions of people already, and will eventually cover and help many more. The UPS driver who collected my boxes told me with happiness that he was glad it was upheld; his child suffered from what most health insurance companies would consider a pre-existing condition, and because of the law she could not be denied coverage. He is one of many. He is one of us. Thank you to the President, the Congress who passed the law, and to the Supreme Court justices who bravely and rightly upheld it.

***

U.Va. PRESIDENT Teresa Sullivan (Dan Addison, U. of Virginia)

It is the case that things happen that I think could not possibly happen, which suggests that I am either still too naïve, something my father warned me about when I was young, or that I have not lost my capacity for astonishment. I'll go with the latter.  What astonished me?  For starters, the abrupt, public dismissal of the first female president of the august University of Virginia, Teresa Sullivan, by a group of wealthy corporate hacks who had, through the graces of Virginia's Republican governor, Bob McDonnell, come to dominate the Board of Visitors, the name for the powerful trustees who control what is still Mr. Jefferson's university. I spent 2 years there in the early 1990s, and I can say that it is an institution steeped in its history and traditions, distinguished academically in many disciplines, and not one in which things such as the rude, crude dismissal of presidents by secret plot happen regularly. As it turns out, the gang of however many, led by a real estate honcho named Helen Dragas (she was the "rector"), had two main concerns they felt Sullivan wasn't tackling swiftly enough. They wanted her to kill certain departments--like the Classics and German--to save money, and they wanted her to jump into the online teaching game, panicked as they were by the likes of Stanford and MIT (two institutions in my opinion most likely to undertake such experiments), and, it seems, not unsurprisingly, Harvard, in racing forward in doing so. Apparently Sullivan, being a reasonable person and grasping that a university president, especially at a major state institution, is not a dictator, did not sign off readily on either plan, and so Dragas and her conspirators secretly planned--all documented in released emails--to oust her, keeping their plans close to their vests until it was a fait accompli. They did. It was, in sum, a coup. A furore ensued. The university community protested vehemently, and Sullivan's replacement even felt shamed enough not to want the job permanently. Some members of the Board of Visitors hadn't even known about the plan until it was undertaken. But, to their credit, they reversed themselves, and on Tuesday unanimously reinstated Sullivan.  (Why she would reassume the job knowing that vultures like the ones she dealt with were hovering around I do not know.) But good for her, good for the University of Virginia, and a tocsin for all other public universities, large and small, as well as for private ones, rich or poor.

Today the business of universities, at least in the eyes of many wealthy trustees, Randroid legislators, and many members of the public, is business. I mean both corporatization, and an increasing emphasis on business education and business study-related thinking. No matter how outstanding a job a university has been in achieving its goals, no matter how narrow or broad its mandate, no matter how relevant the fields it emphasizes, the aim today is to mimic corporations, to corporatize every aspect of university life, to place money at the forefront of everything.  The liberal arts, the life of the mind, the search for and creation of knowledge, the creation of community--none of it matters to those who want every institution of higher education to be ranked #1 and a carbon copy of GE. Look at what the state systems in Texas and California have been dealing with over the last few years. But this is a problem not just in the US; just note what Great Britain is doing in terms of hiking student fees, privileging wealthy students, slashing departments, forcing faculty members to fit business-developed metrics, and pushing for funding cuts to be made up, if at all, by corporations, and there is also the ongoing crisis in Québec, Canada, whose root issue is creeping privatization.

One irony for the UVa coup agents, as someone pointed out online today, is that the classics provide more than enough examples not just of the sort of behavior Dragas behaved in, but enough history, philosophy and literature to explain and illustrate the world we live in today, and, as regards the German department, Germany holds the fate of Europe, and thus the globe, in its hands. Of course irony is a key component of literature, a field many of the pro-business types are hostile too. Lost on them is too kind a word. But best wishes to President Sullivan, and goodspead to all in her position all over the country and globe.

***

The 2012 London Olympics will be upon us soon enough. I can't wait. So to will the Major League All Star game. The All England Club Wimbledon Tennis tournament, which I used to watch avidly, is also occurring now. And the British Open Golf tournament, at a suitably scraggly course, will happen in short order.  (The NBA Finals are over, and the Miami Heat won, 4-1, which gladdened me because the Oklahoma City Thunder's owners are rabidly anti-gay. Also, it redeemed LeBron James in the eyes of some; I'm all for him, so I was glad he brought home a crown to go with his predictions in prior years.)

But--I have been peeping the Euro 2012 soccer tournament. I wasn't really paying attention, and then one night I was in one of those extremely affordable pizza joint-cum-bars that you find in European countries, and saw England playing Sweden, I think, and England came back and won the match 3-2, the restaurant patrons erupted with cheers, I found myself drawn in, and now I eager to see who wins between the finalists, Spain and Italy, two countries particularly down on their luck these days but good enough as soccer powers to push the other top teams out of the way.

In the ex-colonial powers match-up, Spain defeated Portugal in the semifinals on penalty kicks, while the ex-fascists semifinal entailed Italy sending Germany packing 2-1, on 2 goals by the fro-hawked Mario Balotelli. The Spain-Portugal game from the snippet I saw was like watching a chalkboard dry, while Balotelli gave the latter game a jolt with his second, game-winning goal, on a crossing pass from Riccardo Montolivo, which he fired into the upper right corner of the goal from a distance. He promptly stripped off his shirt to display three blue (Gli Azzuri!) blue stripes on his muscular back, which led to a penalty. Drama! I want to see the final. Either team gets my vote. Go PIGS*! (Portugal-Italy-Greece-Spain!)

An update: UEFA, the organizer of the Euro 2012 tournament, has fined Spain €20,000 over its fans' racist chants against Mario Balotelli during their Group C clash. (Russia was fined €30,000 for its fans' monkey chants against the Czech Republic player Theodor Gebre Selassie, whose family originally is from Ethiopia. Russia's tournament fine total now tallies €225,000.) Balotelli has repeatedly been the target of racist invective, including during Italy's June 14th match against Croatia, which led UEFA to impose a sanction of €80,000 on that nation. I am hoping the Spanish fans choose not to resort to form during the final game. If so, go Italy!

Spain's Pique challenges Portugal's Nani during their Euro 2012 semi-final soccer match at Donbass Arena in Donetsk. DARREN STAPLES/REUTERS

Spain's goalkeeper Casillas makes a save next to team mate Iniesta and Portugal's Nani during their Euro 2012 semi-final soccer match at the Donbass Arena in Donetsk. ALESSANDRO BIANCHI/REUTERS

Spain's Pique scores a goal against Portugal's goalkeeper Patricio during penalty shoot-out at their Euro 2012 semi-final soccer match at Donbass Arena in Donetsk. DARREN STAPLES/REUTERS

German midfielder Sami Khedira (3dR) vies with Italian opponents during the Euro 2012 football championships semifinal match at the National Stadium in Warsaw.
GIUSEPPE CACACE / AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Italy's Mario Balotelli scores the first goal.
Matthias Schrader / AP

Mario Balotelli flexing his muscles after his second goal.

What Is a Publisher? or, Changes in Scholarly Publishing

Work, and not post-turkey recovery keeps me from these pages. We're now in reading week, which means conferences with the undergraduates, honors and theses manuscripts and other program and departmental materials to read, and final preparation for next quarter, which begins January 3, 2012. Brief indeed will be my break.  I am trying to complete a syllabus for a new course, one of three I'll be teaching come January, which falls under the department's theory rubric, in post-Stonewall American LGBTQ literature, and though I have taught some of the theoretical and creative texts I'm considering for it, I'm still trying to figure out how best to map some of the theoretical texts onto the rough 40-year historical timeline I've conceptualized. Book orders need to be in by tomorrow, so I will certainly figure it out soon!

***

As he always does, Reggie H. forwarded along a very important link the other day that I have not yet been able to stop thinking about. In Monday's Chronicle of Higher Education, in the Prof. Hacker section, which offers tips on teaching, technology and productivity, Adeline Koh, a professor of literature at Richard Stockton College, New Jersey discusses her experiences at THATCamp Publishing in Baltimore. Koh, whose scholarly interests include postcolonial theory and literatures, 20th century British literature, African and Southeast Asian literature, global feminist theory, and the digital humanities, describes THATCamp (The Humanities and Technology Camp) Publishing as an "'unconference'" that explored the salient issues around contemporary academic publishing, including, as she breaks them down

1. Who should publish digital scholarly research?
2. Should digital academic research be published by the university press, or the university library?
3. How should the process of peer review change?
4. And finally, who should provide the work that goes into producing a publication—editing, peer review, administration and graphics?

As she continues

THATCamp Publishing provided a forum for three stakeholders in this changing industry: traditional academic publishers, libraries-as-publishers, and faculty. While traditional publishers are interested in the bottom line, libraries-as-publishers are focused on the problem of access. Faculty, on the other hand, are concerned with how their publications will lead to promotion, tenure, and the advancement of knowledge. THATCamp Publishing highlighted how the evaporation of funding for scholarly publishing and the rise of the Internet as a low-cost, easy-access means of dissemination are radically changing the nature of this industry, and the inter-relationships of these three stakeholders.

On a more fundamental level, you could perhaps say the central question of the conference was and is, Who and what is a publisher? Beside this question we might ask, Who can (afford to, these days) and should publish scholarly journals and books? Koh focuses on university libraries, but I would say that small, independent academic e-publishers could step into the breach, but the problems of funding, revenues and humanpower remain. What happens when the technological infrastructure and conditions make publishing easier yet undercut the financial model that has supported scholarly book publishing up to today? What happens when the revenue and funding streams, even after structural reconfiguration, no longer exist, and what might counterbalance this financial loss? How do these changes and challenges effect future scholars, those emerging from graduate school, those already holding tenure-track positions, and those already tenured?  And, perhaps most pressing to me, are academic institutions and faculties, especially hiring and tenure committees, taking into account these technological, structural and economic changes?

My questions, which aren't rhetorical, exceed in some cases Koh's focus, though they're linked. She homes in on the issue of scholarly journals and their financial and structural relationship to monographs.  As she points out, at many presses, the scholarly journal subscriptions have subsidized the scholarly monographs, which often do not sell well enough to avoid balance-sheet losses. When the journals go online, however, cutting the revenue stream and making the subsidy structure no longer viable, what happens to the monographs? 

She goes on to talk about open access journals and asks about peer review in light of these changes. For many peer review scenarios, anonymity, which allows referees to speak their minds freely, is key; in the absence of anonymity will referees be as candid? Will they pay a price for their candor? Koh also asks how open can journals be in permitting commentary, and what about trolls or people seeking primarily to be nasty and flippant? Even controlling for these challenges, what about the academic and possible financial capital that referees gain from engaging in this (now anonymous) process? For faculty members at every stage of their career, serving as outside referees and peer reviewers is an important responsibility, but if it becomes a free-for-all in the future, how much weight will doing so carry?

There is the even more pressing issue of underwriting the work associated with producing journals and scholarly books. Where is the money to come from? As things stand, many colleges and universities may provide subvention funds, from various sources, which go to publishers to help scholars publish worthy books that will not result in sufficient sales. But subvention funds to cover publishing costs is one thing; as Koh says, "Upon signing a contract with a traditional publisher, authors and editors generally expect that the publisher will be responsible for work like copyediting, administration, finding peer reviewers, graphic design, and marketing." University libraries, which Koh points out have gotten into the game of publishing, do not, like some smaller presses, provide such activities, but see themselves as offering "publishing support services." I think it's inarguable to say that they cannot afford the complete roster of services traditional university publishers could, and as Koh goes on to point out, their relationship to the university presses with which some of them may be affiliated remains unclear and "in flux." Again, where is the necessary funding to come from?

It is 2011 and we are not, however, going to turn back the clock. E-publishing is here to stay. I was thus happy to learn that these issues, which I have broached in relation to mainstream publishing (and to a lesser degree, academic publishing) in my Situation of Writing class and also bring up in other courses, are part of lively cross-institutional discussions and wish I could have attended THATCamp.  Yet given how much these changes are upon us, I must note that I have not heard more than a passing discussion, in my department at least, of any of this in the 9 years I have been at the university. It is as if it does not exist, or is occurring in some off-stage realm that does not directly concern humanities--literature--scholars, at a time when the role, place and teaching of humanities in higher education are themselves, like the current university model, facing economic and existential threats.

In my email response to Reggie H. and others in our email circle, I pointed out that at the university, the library oversees the press, so that a version of the library-as-publisher model is already underway, down to the library and the university requiring that the press minimize losses, with the result that everything, from editing to marketing, operates on a shoestring, and financial subvention is required for certain types of publications. Also, it's the case that some journals have faced closure because of costs. This isn't theoretical, but the reality, and has been thus for some years now. On the other hand, let me be clear that, as far as I know, the library is not itself yet directly publishing journals, or books. 

I also stated that, in my experience, some humanities faculty members of previous generations who are still teaching may not be sure how to evaluate any scholarly work that does not appear in a major cross-field journal, in a well-known specific sub-field journal, in a new journal from major journal publisher, or that, in the absence of any of these, does not have a major scholarly name or institution associated with it. E-versions of these journals would probably pass muster, but new open access options would be a problem. They respond the same way with book manuscripts; they must come from one of the major presses for academic books, or from one of the chief press known to be theoretically or methodologically progressive, or from a press known for expertise in a particular field or subfield. I have sat through more than a few meetings where issues concerning a given publishing house, contracts and so forth, have arisen.

My question to Reggie H and others is: what will change this attitude given that in increasingly more humanities fields, there is minimal readership for and no publishing money to issue the books--monographs based on dissertations--that graduate students are still producing and must produce? In some fields that continue to grow, or where scholars, with a second or successive books, feel able to write for broader audiences, there may be broader readerships out there who will mean a loss is less likely. But how many people even in certain fields can get through some of the admittedly valid and important scholarly works being produced, and if publishers are saying they cannot afford to produce because the former economic model has vanished as a result of technological changes, what is going to happen and when will faculties make the shift?  Will we return to the point where a first or in the cases of certain institutions, a second book, is less important? Will only those who manage to produce books be tenurable, and how will this affect what's studied? Will online and open access books be taken seriously sooner rather than later as things change? Which publishers will be considered valid?

These questions are valid for the publishing industry as a whole, as e-publishing increasingly takes hold. Many creative writers and authors of other sorts are coming to terms with the changes and trying to stay apace if they cannot get out front of what's going on, as are literary agents, mainstream publishers, libraries, the bookselling industry, and so forth. I think universities are also doing so, but I do think that there should be more discussion in departments and among scholars of these shifts, which are happening right now and aren't going to change. I thus thank Adeline Koh, THATCamp, and the Chronicle for putting them front and center, and would love to hear J's Theater's readers' thoughts on how this all is unfolding.

Reggie H.'s "Visionaries" + Kameny & Ettlebrick, LGBTQ Pioneers

Over at the Noctuary, Reggie H. posts a very thoughtful entry on "Visionaries" that includes tributes to civil rights pioneers Derrick Bell and Fred Shuttlesworth, whom I did not get an opportunity to memorialize, as well as to Steve Jobs. The post also includes an encomium to our dear now deceased fellow poet James Richardson, with one of his sharp, powerful poems, a sonnet to our ancestor Phillis Wheatley. I recommend it.

It feels like a season of memorials. I noted this week the passing of Frank Kameny (1925-2011), who spent nearly the last 50 years fighting for full legal and social equality for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people, and Paula Ettelbrick (1955-2011), whose held leadership roles with the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, as legal director, (1986 –1993); the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) as policy director, (1993 –1994); Empire State Pride Agenda as legislative counsel, (1994 – 1999); the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force as director of family policy, (1999 –2001); and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission as executive director (2003 – 2009). I was fortunate to serve with Paula on the board of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the City University of New York, Graduate Center, back in the late 1990s. 

Kameny lived long enough to see some of his hardest work come to fruition; a veteran who was later drummed out of a federal job because he was gay and one of the activists behind the American Psychological Association's decision in 1974 to cease labeling homosexuality as a disorder, Kameny was present as President Barack Obama signed the law repealing the Don't Ask, Don't Tell bill, and had also witnessed the legalization fo same-sex marriage in Washington, DC; legal protections for LGBTQ people enacted in the Federal District and in many states across the country; and the public mood on LGBTQ people and equality shifted, gradually but steadily, to where it is today.

Paula was on the front lines for the battle for LGBTQ equality in New York and across the country, and played a key role in Rudy Giuliani's decision to grant domestic partnership rights and benefits in 1999. That tectonic shift, in the city that 30 years before had witnessed the Stonewall Riots and decades of LGBTQ activism of varoius kinds, laid the groundwork for the momentous legislation this year enacting same-sex marriage across New York State.  Her most recent position has been Executive Director of the Stonewall Community Foundation in New York. I remember her as one of many towering figures--but also down-to-earth, funny, progressive in her vision, and a joy to work with--on that CLAGS board, people I learned from then and continue to learn from. She leaves her partner, two children, an ex-partner, and other family members.

To learn more about the Paula Ettelbrick Internship Fund, please go here.

Remembering Vincent Woodard

At the Noctuary, Reggie H. has posted a loving tribute, "Safe Journeys," to poet Vincent Woodard, who recently passed away in Boulder, Colorado. I didn't know Vincent, who was at Cave Canem during my phantom (1997) year, but I often heard very good things about him and his work, and am sorry I never had the opportunity to meet him (I thought I had, when Evie described him, but now I realize I never did).

Here's what Reggie writes:

Vincent's critical/academic work explored issues of sexuality and gender in African American studies. But to me his real work was Spiritual. His readings and performances were more like revivals, visitations of the spirits, than what we usually think of as 'readings.' Relatively straightforward recitations would suddenly turn into incantations, sermons, divinations. His body and voice would shake as if possessed by the words, or the spirit of the words, he was the vessel for. "Moving" doesn't even come close to the experience of hearing him perform. The man could shake you to your foundations without seeming to break a sweat. Many of us remember him as someone who seemed made more of Light than of Flesh, radiating peace, wisdom, and a great deal of strength and courage.

And, yes, I think I fell a little in love with him when we first met. How could anyone resist such an Angel? I will miss his dear, beautiful soul.

If you knew Vincent, please post your thoughts on Reggie's comment section. If you didn't please visit his site to learn a little about one of the many not well known angels in our literature.