Escapology Under Fugitive Law

Roundtable Proposal

 ASAP-14 Conference

Arts of Fugitivity

Wednesday, October 4th — Friday, October 6th, 2023

Seattle, WA

Conveners: Samantha Pergadia and Casey Patterson

From Henry Box Brown to Harriet Jacobs, Boots Riley to Jordan Peele, Margaret Garner to Sethe, Black escape artists fill the history and imagination of African American art. From the actual people who escaped fugitive slave catchers to the poets who composed under slavery and carceral capitalism, how do Black escape artists offer a map and history for how we got trapped, here, in this America, a sinking ship we’re trapped on – from a ship of dreams to an escape room, the sunken place, our subconscious screaming into the void of the afterlife of reproductive slavery. And how do we find the keys to get out, to build classrooms, multi-racial coalitions, cities, countries, contacts, loving contagions that abolish the schoolteachers who have colonized our minds, settled us into sunken worlds through ships we think of as a part of the American dream that turn instead to the Middle Passage?

This panel convenes papers that think about escape artists, broadly conceived, and how to build classrooms and pedagogy that abolish the schoolteachers of the world, teach them to see history not through the master’s pen but from Sethe’s song. We aim to create a conversation and collaborative space in which we can make art and build worlds for Morrison’s Pecola, for Ward’s Jojo. 

Please send abstracts (<500 words) of a short paper and a brief bio to spergadia@smu.edu and caseyp@stanford.edu