On Reading Dialect in Harper's 'Iola Leroy'
Channel: The Dickens Project
Date: 2022-02-24

A roundtable conversation with Brigitte Fielder (University of Wisconsin, Madison), Eric Gardner (Saginaw Valley State University), Jennifer James (George Washington University), Derrick R. Spires (Cornell University), and Richard Yarborough (University of California, Los Angeles).

We staged this conversation with expert scholars in nineteenth-century African American literary studies in order to give viewers a glimpse into the ongoing conversations about Black dialect in US literature, African American literature, and Harper’s novel. This glimpse appears in the form of a roundtable discussion with teacher-scholars who have written about Harper, taught her work, and engaged deeply in conversations on this complex topic with students, colleagues, and the broader public.