The sixth annual ReVIEWING Black Mountain College conference, focusing on writers associated with the college and their influence, will take place September 26-28 at UNC Asheville’s Reuter Center, home of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
During its short history, Black Mountain College was a hub for innovative thinkers and artists who made tremendous impact on science and culture. In the field of literature, contributions associated with the college include the groundbreaking ideas of Charles Olson and Robert Creeley in poetry, the incisive and revealing non-fiction of Francine du Plessix Gray and Michael Rumaker, and the scholarly work of Suzi Gablik and Charles Perrow.
The conference keynote presentation, The Difficulty of Pleasure: A Whole Life in a Single Work of Art, will be delivered by poet, translator, critic and curator Vincent Katz. A member of the faculty of the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Katz was the editor of Black Mountain College Experiment in Art (The MIT Press, 2002, reprinted in 2013). His talk takes place at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 27. Admission is included with conference registration, or as a single event for $25.
Other featured conference speakers include Mary Emma Harris, an independent scholar and author of The Arts at Black Mountain College (The MIT Press, 1987, reprinted in 2002), whose talk is titled, Black Mountain: Was It a Real College or Did We Just Make It Up Ourselves?
Also featured will be William Craig Rice, grandson of the founder of Black Mountain College, John Andrew Rice. William Rice co-edited the recently released edition of his grandfather’s once-suppressed autobiography, I Came Out of the Eighteenth Century (University of South Carolina Press, 2014).
In conjunction with the conference, the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center is presenting the exhibition, Dan Rice at Black Mountain College: Painter Among the Poets, exploring the world of the abstract expressionist painter and Black Mountain College alumnus. The exhibition is curated by Brian Butler, Thomas Howerton Distinguished Professor of Humanities and professor of philosophy at UNC Asheville.
The conference fee is $70.00 and includes an annual membership to the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. Admission is free to UNC Asheville students, faculty, and staff, and $40 for members of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNC Asheville. For more information, visit the Black Mountain College website.