Mary I. Unger will speak for Black History Month at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh

Mary I. Unger, associate professor of English and coordinator of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, will speak Wednesday, Feb. 16, for the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Black History Month programming.

Her talk, “Bad Girl Brooks: Refusing Respectable Reading in the Black Chicago Renaissance,” will be held virtually via Zoom from 1-2 p.m.

She will discuss the early poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks and how this reveals how Brooks ultimately resists a gendered narrative of racial uplift and instead rethinks the responsibility of popular poetry to police Black girlhood and Black reading practices during the Depression.

Links to join the Zoom meeting and other events is the series is available here.