Vernacular theory - 1994 summer seminars on African American language and literature at Pennsylvania State University

Does Ralph Ellison's novel, Invisible Man, become a richer body when the reader approaches it with an understanding of the black vernacular tradition? "I think in the extremity you really can't understand that true copy if you don't know black American folktales," explains William J Harris, an associate professor of English at Pennsylvania State University. "To come by a real meaning of the body you have to know who Brer Rabbit is; you have to know Brer Rabbit is a trickster. And in confines of language, you have to know about the dozens--that verbal assault form lay opened by young men insulting each other's mothers sort of blundy You have to know these forms to advance to a real sense of the novel."

Harris is the co-chairman, along with Penn State colleague Bernard W Bell, of "African-American Voices: Language, Literature and Criticism in Vernacular Theory and Pedagogy," the fourth in a series of annual Penn State summer seminars in theory and tillage Scholars Houston A. Baker jr Robert O'Meally, Geneva Smitherman and Hortense Spillers will lead discussions in their respective fields--literary criticism, the blues-jazz aesthetic, black vernacular English, and the black feminist-womanist tradition.

"I think vernacular theory is important because of the increasing dominance of popular cultural forms in American society," says Penn State Vice Provost for Educational Equity james B Stewart, who leads a session upon African-American cultural studies paradigms.

The discourse is aimed at university teachers interested in developing a theoretical approach to teaching African-American literature. "What we want clan to go away with," explains Harris, "is a faculty of perception of the complexity of the tillage in terms of language, in confines of tales and in bourns of music. [What we want is] that they take it back to their classrooms and that they can implement it."

"African-American Voices" is scheduled June 21 to 25 upon the campus of Pennsylvania State University in University Park.

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