Post45 Graduate Symposium; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan

Conference: Post45 Graduate Symposium at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan
March, 14 – 15, 2025

Presentation: The Carceral Microlibrary as Counterpublic in the Nonproft Poetics of Reginald Dwayne Betts

REPORT:

This past weekend, from March 14th  to March 15th, I participated in a two-day conference at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The forum convened twelve graduate student scholars from the host university and other institutions in the US and Canada in order to discuss their work with one another as well as with faculty at the University of Michigan. Participants, along with members of the hosting committee and steering committee, were required to attend all sessions. That meant that on average there were about twenty people in the room for each presentation. It was required that you read everyone’s paper completely in order to fully participate. As such, we were required to submit our essays a month before the event, and, three weeks prior to the symposium, they were shared with the group at large. For each paper, we were required to include a short headnote contextualizing the piece and explaining what sort of feedback we were hoping to get. At the end of the first night, there was a lecture by a faculty member, and at the end of the second night, several U of Michigan professors participated in a roundtable. The theme of the conference was about the idea of the public in media and literary production. There were also various opportunities for networking outside of the presentations.

The event was housed by the Department of Communications and Media Studies, but many of the participants were in literary studies, which is my primary field. As an organization, Post45—the title of which refers to cultural production created after World War II—is about a decade old. Under the aegis of Post45, there is a publishing branch, a faculty branch, and a graduate student affiliated branch, which is the one that organized this event. What’s unique is that rather than give a lecture as a presenter, the structure of the event is such that a faculty respondent with knowledge of your topic, who has previously read your paper, will kick off the conversation with a 10 or fifteen minute response to your paper. Then the majority of the remaining time, around 25 minutes, is filled by responses from the other graduate students. Throughout all this, the author must remain silent. When five minutes are remaining, the author is given time to respond to the suggestions and critiques. Then, depending on the point in the day, we would move on to someone else’s paper, repeating the same structure, or change to a break time.

Overall, I really enjoyed the event. I got really good feedback related to my methodology, my theorization, and keywords such as cultural capital and repoliticization. The faculty respondent, Prof. Megan Sweeney, seemed really interested in the essay and shared her own work on prisons and her published books (2) on the topic of carceral literacy. She said she would mail me her book. Everybody was polite. It was interesting to meet people from other institutions, including Princeton, SUNY Buffalo, Northwestern, the University of Toronto and other universities. I was told that Post45 has a peer-reviewed academic journal, so now I feel encouraged to revise my essay over the summer and submit to the publication. I also established contacts with several professors and grad students that will be helpful in advancing and expanding this essay, which was supposed to be 15 pages, plus citations. I would like to expand it to 25 pages, and submit over the late summer. Given the quality of feedback I received, I do not think I need to present it again at other venues. Rather, the plan is to now convert it into an article.