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Apr 05
Through May 31, 2012, Oregon nonprofits may apply to host Conversation Project programs taking place between July 1, 2012 and October 31,... More
Jul 15
Race and change in Oregon. Life after war. Censorship in literature. Rethinking downtown. These are just a few of topics available during... More
The Conversation Project offers Oregon nonprofits free programs that engage community members in thoughtful, challenging conversations about ideas critical to our daily lives and our state's future. Conversations are facilitated by some of Oregon's most respected humanities scholars.
Recent efforts to remove the “n” word in literature—from the new edition of Mark Twain’s Huck Finn in which the word is changed to “slave” to the attempt to halt a high school production of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone because of what some considered offensive language—raise questions about censorship. Is censorship ever a good thing? Should accommodations be made considering the difference between a character’s and author’s point of view? Reed College professor Pancho Savery will facilitate a discussion that examines these questions, as well as how language is used in Twain’s and Wilson’s texts.
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Program available through October 2013
Pancho Savery is professor of English, humanities, and American studies at Reed College, where he teaches courses in American literature post-1850, African American literature, and modern and contemporary American and European drama. He also teaches in Reed’s freshman humanities program on the Ancient Mediterranean World (focusing on Greece, Egypt, Persia, and Rome). For the last eleven years, he has worked with Oregon Humanities on the Humanity in Perspective program. He has given theater talks at both Portland Center Stage and Artists Repertory Theater, and directed Delve Reading Seminars through Portland Literary Arts. He has published essays on Robert Creeley, Ezra Pound, Saunders Redding, Ralph Ellison, Cecil Brown, Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin, Robert Farris Thompson, Albert Murray and others. Recent poems appear in the current issue of Hubbub.
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