Erasure Symposium: Interrogating Power, Form, & Narrative

In honor of the 30th National Poetry Month, join us for a half-day symposium exploring erasure as an artistic practice, archival condition, and lived political reality.

Bringing together poets, artists, librarians, scholars, and community members, the symposium examines how power shapes what is preserved, obscured, revised, or forgotten across language, material culture, and public memory.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

12:00 - 1:00pm: Keynote Reflection & Reading

Poet & translator Khaled Mattawa opens the symposium by reflecting on erasure across artistic practice, institutional power, and narrative history.

1:00 - 3:00pm: Research & Creative Panel Presentations

Two moderated conversations, and audience dialogue, with interdisciplinary panelists exploring the creative, philosophical, and political dimensions of erasure.

Panel I — Erasure as Structure: Archive, Preservation, and Memory

• Egyptian Workmen in the University of Michigan's Excavations of Karanis — Zeinab Musa
• Revealing, Removing, Concealing: the Conservation of a 16th-Century Book of Hours — Trina Parks-Matthews
• The Temporality of “Dysfluent” Speech in Jerome Ellis’s "Aster of Ceremonies" — Kelly Rafferty
• Discussant: Barbara Alvarez, librarian for the Humanities and Comparative Literature, and director for International Studies

Panel II — Erasure as Practice: Translation, Embodiment, and Survival

• Discussing the Tatreez Tapestry: Memorializing the Gaza Martyrs — Beth Bailey and Melissa El Jamal
• Imaginary Lines: Erasure, Hegemony, & the Minor Nation in Ecuadorean Cultural Production — Juan Romero Vinueza
• Normalizing Annihilation: Progress and Ecological Erasure in Lahore — Saleema Waraich
• Discussant & Orator: Jennifer Sperry Steinorth, lecturer for the Department of English & Creative Writing and author of "Boys Behind Glass"

3:00-4:30pm: Erasure Poetry Workshop

Join a guided creative session led by poet and anthropologist Caroline Harper New, where you can engage erasure techniques using provided texts and materials. No prior experience necessary, and supplies will be provided. Please register.

4:30-5:00pm: Closing and End

We'll synthesize themes, surface resonances between panels and practice, and reflect on how erasure operates within our own community.