Presentations
Dr. Parker doesn't mind talking about her research.
Vampires, and ghosts, and us — oh my! In the spirit world of the Halloween season, Drs. Pirok and Parker invite you to embrace the shadows that represent our deepest fears in the stately and hauntingly beautiful Mansion on Forsyth Park. Dr. Pirok will examine the relationship between the Southern Gothic literary tradition and the development of Savannah’s ghost tourism, a development that has earned Savannah the claim of being “the most haunted city” in the country. She will explore how our streets are not haunted by individual specters but largely by a mythical vision of their own past. Dr. Parker will further trace how mythical recollections of an antebellum South, replete with its own tormented history, contribute to the post-emancipation stereotyping of Black people as vampiric predators. Together they will invite you to reconsider how stories of hauntings, vampires and things undying shape our images of the past, our experiences of the present, and our apparitions of the future. |
Harnessing the Shadows: Ghosts, Vampires and Undying Relationships
to Our Past Date: Sunday, November 3, 2019 Location: Savannah, GA |
She Bites Back: Black Women as Predators in Life & Lit
Date: Februrary 28, 2019
Location: Hope College
Date: Februrary 28, 2019
Location: Hope College
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If you're interested in some of the back story for Dr. Parker's book (and how some of her students' experiences pushed her to finish the book), check out "She Bites Back: A Faculty Feature from Dr. Kendra R. Parker" from February 2019. |
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Kindred at (Nearly) 40: A Challenge for Our Changing Same
Date: October 8, 2018 Location: University of Maryland Baltimore County Octavia E. Butler's Kindred reveals to us that the more times change, the more they stay the same. Dana Franklin’s story teaches us that “we’ve been here before,” and we’re certainly in that “here” now. What we read about in Kindred, we see today unfolding before our very eyes. 2019 will be 40 years since the publication of Kindred, so I’m here to speak to you today about what Kindred can teach us and inspire us to do regarding allyship and civil disobedience. |
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Women as Predators in Life and Lit; Or, How I Spent Grad School Writing About Black Female Vampires
Date: April 10, 2018 Location: University of West Georgia In this presentation, Dr. Parker discussed how she spent her last few years of graduate school writing about Black female vampires. |