Macalester will host its fourth annual African American Studies Conference this weekend. The conference, billed "Representing Blackness: From the Black Arts Movement of the Sixties to the Present," will feature presentations by scholars from around the country as well as by Macalester faculty and students.

The conference will operate in conjunction with the 25th anniversary celebration of Penumbra, a professional African American theater. Wednesday's symposium, "Chains and Change: Labor, Community, Love and Wisdom," began to explore the works of Pulitzer-winning playwright August Wilson.

Presenters at the conference will continue to explore representations of blackness in the works of Wilson, whose play, "Two Trains Running," opens at the Penumbra on Saturday, Feb. 15 at 8 p.m., and in other dramatic writings, literature, poetry, music and visual media.

The conference kicks off tonight at 7 p.m. with Keynote Speaker Paul Carter Harrison, an Obie-award-winning playwright and writer currently in residence at Columbia College in Chicago.

Saturday will feature three panels: "Race and Identity in August Wilson's plays," "Textual/Literary Representations and Poetics" and "Visual/Video Artists and Representations of Blackness." Each panel includes presentations by three or four speakers and will be moderated by a Macalester professor. Additionally, Alexis Pate, Professor of African American Studies at the University of Minnesota, will offer a Saturday lunch address.

"Many of the speakers are graduate students and junior professors," said Acting Coordinator of African American Studies and Professor of History Peter Rachleff. "The focus is on emerging works and emerging scholars."

"The works being presented are very exciting," Rachleff continued. "Aside from the keynote speaker, the presenters are not being paid – and they're paying their own way to get here. They are very passionate about this."

Sunday's panels include "Organizational Politics and the Black Arts Movement," "Contemporary Representations of Blackness" and "Representations of Blackness in Literature."

In keeping with the conference's focus on emerging scholarship, Rachleff notes, there will be a "special treat" in the form of a student panel, comprised of Josh Bertsch, Renee Chandler and Taous Khazem '03.

The complete schedule of events is located on the web at http://www.macalester.edu/aas/conference/