2019 VATE Conference: Come Alive!

The time
Cracks into furious flower. Lifts its face
All unashamed. And sways in wicked grace
--From “The Second Sermon on the Warpland” by Gwendolyn Brooks (1968)

The purpose of this session is to educate, celebrate, and inform high school and college teachers about African American poets through the Furious Flower web-based digital archive: www.furiousflower.org. In particular, the poets’ performances/presentations and accompanying lesson plans from the digital archive will highlight African American poets who presented at the 1994 Furious Flower Conference located at James Madison University. The poets highlighted at the 1994 Conference are known for spurring the Black Arts Movement. As a tribute to one of the elders of the movement, the conference was named in honor of Gwendolyn Brooks. This session will preview the digital archive along with accompanying lesson plans and resource materials. Some of the poets highlighted in the archive include: Gwendolyn Brooks, Elizabeth Alexander, Rita Dove, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Samuel Allen, Michael S. Harper, and Amiri Baraka. In addition to previewing the digital archive, the presenters will also provide a teaching demonstration based on one of the lesson plans in the digital archive and the audience will participate as engaged leaners. To view the lesson plans please visit www.furiousflower.org and click on the icon, “classroom.” This will lead you to the student portal and teacher resources page which include the lesson plans. While the 1994 Furious Flower archive has been housed at James Madison University, this is the first time the archive has been innovated and opened to the public through a web-based digital archive. In the spring of 2019, approximately 30 JMU students and six faculty members from five different disciplines (i.e. English, education, writing and rhetoric, history, and graphic design) worked to build a web-based prototype digital archive for the Furious Flower Poetry Center, the nation’s first academic center for African American poetry. The Furious Flower digital archive project highlights the 1994 conference, its flagship conference, as its starting point. Furious Flower looks forward to unveiling its digital archive while also celebrating its 25th Anniversary in September of 2019 at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. An overview of the digital archive will be presented along with two or three lesson plans that are specifically written for high school English teachers. The lesson plan themes follow: History, Witness and the Struggle for Freedom; Language, Music, and Cultural Expression; and Progress over 25 years. The lesson plans will include the video performances, poems, reading and writing connections, history and culture, poetic styles, essential questions, Common Core standards, and the Virginia Standards of Learning to name a few.