2/4 Athenaeum at 1pm -Phillis Wheately the first African American Poet by Michlitsch and Ripley

Join us on Wednesday February 4 at 1:00pm for Professor Gretchen Michlitsch and Professor Chuck Ripley's presentation on Phillis Wheately the first African American Poet.

Michlitsch and Ripley discuss Phillis Wheatley, the First African-American Poet
Brought from Gambia, Africa to colonial America in 1761, Phillis Wheatley entered Euro-American Christian culture as an enslaved girl. A literary prodigy, she became the first published black American poet in 1767. Her poems provide an important window into the developing but conflicting discourses surrounding freedom, race, and human nature in the era of the American Revolution. Gretchen Michlitsch and Chuck Ripley will explore Wheatley’s works in terms of her immediate eighteenth-century context and her twenty-first century significance as the founder of the African-American literary tradition.

The Athenaeum is located on the second floor south side of the WSU Library.
The Athenaeum schedule and more information can be found at: http://www.winona.edu/library/athenaeum/