Campus Read Speaker Series
As part of the St. Louis Literary Award series of programs honoring the 2025 award recipient Colson Whitehead, the Saint Louis University 2025 Campus Read Speaker Series will focus on his award-winning work "The Underground Railroad."
Attendees interested in attending the SLU Campus Book Talk Series can register via Zoom.
2025 Campus Read Events
The Museum of Historical Wonders: Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad with Alexander Manshel, Ph.D.
In 2019, Colson Whitehead appeared on the cover of TIME magazine above the headline "America's Storyteller." This talk will investigate that title by situating The Underground Railroad in the context of Whitehead's storied career as a novelist, including his experiments with literary genre, his forays into America's troubled past, and his contributions to contemporary narratives of slavery.
Alexander Manshel, Ph.D. is an associate professor of English at McGill University. His research focuses on contemporary American fiction and the literary institutions that shape how and what we read. His first book, "Writing Backwards: Historical Fiction and the Reshaping of the American Canon," was published in 2023 by Columbia University Press. His other writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and LitHub, as well as in the scholarly journals PMLA, MELUS, and Post45. He is currently working on book-length history of high school English in the United States.
The Catholic Church and Slavery: Reckoning with a Troubling History with Chris Kellerman, S.J.
7 p.m., Thursday, March 6
Is it really true that people “didn’t know slavery was wrong back then”? Did the Catholic Church teach against slaveholding, or for it? In this presentation, Chris Kellerman, S.J., will explain the basics of the Catholic Church’s historical involvement with slaveholding and the Atlantic slave trade, drawing lessons from this history for contemporary society.
Kellerman is secretary of Justice and Ecology for the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States in Washington, D.C., where he oversees the federal advocacy and government relations office of the Jesuits of the United States. Originally from Arlington, Texas, Kellerman regularly gives talks to Catholic audiences on the history of the Church and slavery and on topics related to social justice. He is the author of "All Oppression Shall Cease: A History of Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Catholic Church."
Hands On The Past, Growing A Creative Archival Future with Sowandé Mustakeem, Ph.D.
7 p.m., Thursday, March 27
The future is what we make of it, and so too is the past and our collective memory of it, as we evolve both generationally and dual centuried. Within this conversation, Sowandé Mustakeem, Ph.D. will show how — for over a decade and a half of her career — that she's developed an array of globally innovative courses, showing the evolution of history/herstory in and over real time to further embolden creative engagement by fusing “old history” with fun accessible content both digital and nondigital. Equally valuable in this particular presentation will be pushing within and beyond the generational challenges of what an archive is on and offline as well as how to decipher the sole code of a long past with cursive. The overall goal today’s talk will be to share how Mustakeem has been offering deep empowerment on a range of ever pertinent historical/herstorical themes while simultaneously getting students "Hands On The Past" so that a well of smart knowledge can be poured in as the archival future arrives.
Mustakeem is an accomplished scholar and historian specializing in the history of the transatlantic slave trade, with a focus on the social and cultural impacts of slavery. She is a faculty member at Washington University in St. Louis, where she teaches courses related to African American history, the Atlantic slave trade, and the history of slavery in the Americas.
Mustakeem is the author of "Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage," a groundbreaking work that delves into the experiences of enslaved Africans during the Middle Passage, examining the trauma, violence, and resilience that characterized the forced migration across the Atlantic. Her academic interests extend beyond the horrors of the slave trade to include the intersections of race, gender, and violence in the African diasporic experience. Mustakeem’s work provides critical insights into the ways in which Black women experienced and resisted enslavement, and she has made significant contributions to the study of Black female incarceration, a topic she traces back to the historical context of slavery.
A Black Woman’s Journey: Studying, Teaching, and Understanding the Institution of Slavery with Katrina Thompson Moore, Ph.D.
7 p.m., Thursday, April 3
History and its social and political significance within society have been a topic of debate and controversy for a long time. Those of us who study and focus on the institution of slavery too often face major challenges when trying to reconstruct the past while also navigating contemporary society's ideas of race, national identity, and myths. This is one Black woman’s journey in navigating identity, family stories, classroom politics, and emotions with the history of enslavement in the United States.
Katrina Thompson Moore, Ph.D. is the associate dean for diversity, equity, inclusion, and engagement for the College of Arts and Sciences. She is also an associate professor in the Department of African American Studies and the Department of History at Saint Louis University. She specializes in 19th- and 20th-century issues of race, gender, stereotypes, popular culture, and American entertainment history. Moore received her B.A. from Our Lady of the Lake University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Moore's book published in 2014 titled "Ring Shout, Wheel About: The Racial Politics of Music and Dance in North American Slavery" focused on the complexity of Black music and dance in the foundation of the United States and has been recognized as one of the 13 most important books in Black history by The Washington Post. She has also published numerous articles and book chapters on the experience of Black people in America. Beyond academic publications, Moore published a children’s book in 2021 to support representation across the spectrum and hopes to venture further into children’s publishing.
For the past sixteen years, Moore has resided and contributed to the St. Louis community, but the events of Ferguson placed a new level of responsibility on her shoulders. After actively supporting the protest movement, she became more involved in the change she wanted to see in the region. These desires resulted in Moore serving as a two-term Alderperson, joining the board of community-serving organizations of Beyond Housing, Women’s Leadership Network of St. Louis and St. Ann Catholic School, and actively volunteering with organizations focused on social justice. Most recently, Moore was recognized by the St. Louis Urban League with the Donald G. Brennan Humanitarian Award for her work within the region. A native of New Orleans, Louisiana, Katrina Moore is a proud wife and mother to two daughters.
Past Campus Read Author Talk and Interviews
Jonathan Galassi
Jonathan Galassi attended Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard College and Cambridge University, where he earned an M.A. in 1973. Mr. Galassi became an editor in the trade division of Houghton Mifflin Company in 1973. He was a senior editor at Random House from 1981 to 1986, when he joined Farrar, Straus and Giroux as vice-president and executive editor. He was named editor-in-chief of FSG in 1988, executive vice-president in 1993, publisher in 1999, and president of the firm in January 2002. Galassi has published two books of poems: "Morning Run" (Paris Review Editions, 1988) and "North Street" (HarperCollins, 2000). He has also translated several volumes of the work of the Italian poet Eugenio Montale.
Nathaniel Millett, Ph.D.
Nathaniel Millett is a historian of the early modern and 19th-century Atlantic World. He is particularly interested in the experience of indigenous and African people in southeastern North America and the Caribbean. His work is comparative, trans-regional, and interdisciplinary. His published works include "The Maroons of Prospect Bluff and Their Quest for Freedom in the Atlantic World" (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013) and numerous compelling journal articles. Millet has also published on the history and memory of slavery at Saint Louis University.
Dillon Brown, Ph.D.
Dillon Brown has a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania and is currently an associate professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. His research focuses more centrally on Anglophone Caribbean literature, though it ranges across several other areas, including Black and Asian British literature, world literature, global modernisms, diaspora, migration, hemispheric American literature, and Anglophone postcolonial literature. His first monograph, "Migrant Modernism: London and the Postwar West Indian Novel" (University of Virginia Press, 2013), examines the interrelations between the foundational postwar novels written by Anglophone Caribbean authors and the British modernist tradition. He has also co-edited a collection of essays, and his works have appeared in a number of scholarly periodicals. He was awarded the Maxwell C. Weiner Humanities Research Grant in 2015 and the J. William Fulbright Research Grant in 2004-2005.
Ian Frazier
Ian Frazier has contributed to The New Yorker since 1974, when he published his first piece in The Talk of the Town. A year later, the magazine ran his first short story, “The Bloomsbury Group Live at the Apollo.” Since then, he has published numerous short stories, as well as nonfiction, Shouts & Murmurs, and Talk of the Town pieces, in the magazine. In 2012, he revived the annual Christmas poem, “Greetings, Friends!,” originated by Frank Sullivan in 1933. Frazier’s 13 books include “Great Plains” (which ran as a three-part series in the magazine), “Family,” “On the Rez,” and “Travels in Siberia.” He has twice won the Thurber Prize for American Humor, for his collections, “Dating Your Mom” (1985) and “Lamentations of the Father” (2008). His most recent book is “Cranial Fracking” (2021), another humor collection. Most of the pieces in those three books also appeared in The New Yorker.
“Catch a Falling Star and Put It In Your Pocket: “Stardust in Context”
Tara Prescott-Johnson: A continuing lecturer in writing programs and a distinguished teacher at UCLA, this presentation will provide a brief overview of the background and publication history of Stardust as well as close analyses of the genre, style, and key scenes in this deeply beloved novel. Prescott-Johnson is the author of “Neil Gaiman in the 21st Century” (McFarland) and co-editor of Feminism in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman (McFarland). She has also served as a consultant for “Neil Gaiman Teaches the Art of Storytelling” for MasterClass and wrote “Diving into the Ocean” for the official program for the National Theatre’s stage adaptation of Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lake.
American Dreams - The History of Comics and Neil Gaiman’s “Enter Sandman” by Martin Casas and Drew Kupsky
Martin Casas, owner of Apotheosis Comics, and Drew Kupsky, Saint Louis University Digital Resources Librarian, will walk attendees through the history and themes of comics as they parallel American history. The discussion will trace the origins of comics through the decades and how they speak for each generation therein. Culminating in the late 1980's as young comics writer Neil Gaiman enters the genre and redefines comics for the decades to follow. This discussion will provide comic artwork from important works and take questions from the audience. Martin Cases is the co-owner of Apotheosis Comics & Lounge, which is Missouri’s only comic book store lounge. Drew Kupsky is the head of the digital services at Pius Library. He has an M.S. in Applied Analytics from Saint Louis University and an M.L.S. in Library and Information Sciences from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Memory, Nostalgia and Memetic Children’s Literature in “The Graveyard Book” - Shiraz Biggie
Hosted by Shiraz Biggie, a Ph.D. candidate in Theatre and Performance at the Graduate
Center, City University of New York, this presentation will look at folklore and children’s
literature. Biggie currently teaches classes in Children’s Literature at Brooklyn
College and Theatre
History at New York University. Her wide-ranging research interests are broadly linked
by ideas of cultural memory and production. Her dissertation research looks at Jewish
and Irish theatre, touring, diaspora, and the use of folklore for national identity.
She has published in Studies in Musical Theatre and The Palgrave Handbook of Musical
Theatre Producers and presented at many conferences including the Children’s Literary
Association, the Association of Theatre in Higher Education and the American Conference
for Irish Studies. In her first of many seasons in the production department of New
York’s New Victory Theatre, she worked with the National Theatre of Scotland’s production
of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s “The Wolves in the Walls.”
"A Tale Told, and Retold, and Told Again: Stardust as Neil Gaiman’s Traditional English Faerie Story” - Joe Sommers
Hosted by Joseph Michael Sommers, Ph.D., a professor of English at Central Michigan University where he teaches coursework in children’s and young adult literature, popular culture, and comics, this talk will discuss Gaiman’s love of faerie stories past and how these faerie stories might and can continue. Sommers has published essays, article and miscellaneous other things on topics in YACL literature and culture, comics, movies, video games, and on Neil Gaiman. The author, curator, and/or editor of seven books, he has published three titles on Gaiman thus far: “Critical Insights on Neil Gaiman,” “Conversations with Neil Gaiman,” and “The Artistry of Neil Gaiman.” His new biography of Gaiman and his seminal work “The Sandman” is due in 2023 from the University Press of Mississippi, and it is tentatively titled “Biographix: Neil Gaiman and The Sandman.” He is the editor of the academic journal Children’s Literature Quarterly and an Editorial Board member of the comics journal, INKS.
“A Teen and Teacher Talk: Neil Gaiman’s Graveyard Book” - Tara Prescott-Johnson
This presentation will be a lively and engaging conversation between Naomi Farkas, a high school student in Los Angeles, and Tara Prescott-Johnson, Ph.D., a lecturer in Writing Programs at UCLA, about “The Graveyard Book” and its impact on young and seasoned readers alike. Prescott-Johnson has a Ph.D. in English, specializing in twentieth-century American literature, from Claremont Graduate University, and a M.A. from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of “Poetic Salvage: Reading Mina Loy,” editor of “Neil Gaiman in the 21st Century,” and co-editor of “Gender and the Superhero Narrative” and “Feminism in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman.” She performed “Hike Your Own Hike” for TEDxUCLA. Naomi Farkas (15, she/they) is a high school sophomore and a book enthusiast. Their poetry has been published in The Los Angeles Press, Stone Soup, Young Poets 2021, Unum e Pluribus, and Gaia Lit. She’s served as a guest speaker in Honors 87W: The Worlds of Neil Gaiman at UCLA and deeply enjoys spending time in cemeteries.
Composer Ilan Eshkeri
London-based composer Ilan Eshkeri, composer of the music for “Stardust,” will speak about working with Gaiman. Eshkeri is an award-winning composer, artist, songwriter, producer and creator whose work is performed in concert, theatre, film, television and video games.
Neil Gaiman’s “Dreaming” - Olivia Badoi
Hosted by Olivia Badoi, Ph.D., associate professor of English at Saint Louis University,
Madrid, this talk considers how Neil Gaiman’s stories (particularly his fairytales)
encourage readers to envision models of knowing and meaning-making that depart from
the standard analytic, reason-based or empirical models we are encouraged to apply
in our day-to-day lives. Badoi is currently working on her first book, “Arboreal Modernism
and the Woodcut Novel,” an eco-critical examination of the
woodcut novel, a type of wordless book that was widely popular in both Europe and
the United States throughout the first half of the twentieth century.
A Child Adopted by a Graveyard Might Grow Up Slightly Spooky: Neil Gaiman’s “The Graveyard Book” - Joseph Michael Sommers
Hosted by Joseph Michael Sommers, Ph.D., a professor of English at Central Michigan University where he teaches coursework in children’s and young adult literature, popular culture, and comics, this talk will focus on Gaiman’s reorientation of the scary and the filial and how a nobody becomes a somebody and at what cost.
An Evening with World Renowned Illustrator, P. Craig Russell
The acclaimed illustrator and painter will discuss his career as well as his long collaboration with writer Neil Gaiman. Russell is the Award-winning illustrator of graphic novels and comics including Coraline, The Graveyard Book, The Giver, Nevermore, American Gods, Various issues of The Sandman, Star Wars, and Batman among many others. P. Craig Russell is a Harvey and Eisner award-winning illustrator of graphic novels and comics including Coraline, The Graveyard Book, The Giver, Nevermore, American Gods, various issues of The Sandman, Star Wars, and Batman among many others. He is considered one of comic art’s most well respected and pioneering artists, known for bringing to life fantasy and magic.
Alex Tickell
Dr. Alex Tickell's talk examines Arundhati Roy's experimental use of form in her two
novels to date: The God of Small Things
(1997) and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017). Tracing Roy's approach to literary
form back to her undergraduate training as an architect and drawing on her later interviews
in activism, Tickell underlines the importance of design aesthetics, urban planning,
and architectonics in her fiction. Tickell suggests that the politics of Roy's work
is intrinsic to the often striking and unsettling design choices of her writing and
Tickell goes on to comment on the environmentalism and infrastructure as key aspects
of her work.
How to Liberate the Language - Amitava Kumar
There are very few contemporary writers who have dedicated themselves to the cause of freedom with as much courage as Arundhati Roy. In her defense of democratic rights, what is immediately noticeable, particularly to a fellow writer, is the huge extent to which Roy finds freedom in her use of language. In both her fiction and non-fiction, it is in her style itself that she proclaims her dissent loudly and flamboyantly. There is so much to admire about this aspect of Roy's writing, the silk wrapped around the sharp edge of steel.
Thursday, Feb. 24 - 7 p.m., Sunita Parikh, Washington University in St. Louis
Thursday, April 14 - 9 a.m., Brinda Bose, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Thursday, April 7 - 7 p.m. Priya Sirohi, Ithaca College & Cornell University, New York
The Best Captain in Starfleet: Chabon, Easter Eggs, & the Evolution of Picard” by Ken Haller
This discussion is led by SLU School of Medicine Professor of Pediatrics, Dr. Ken Haller. Dr. Haller will discuss how Chabon has taken this already rich, complex character and added further shading, employing the entire history of one of the most storied franchises in filmed fiction. In 1987, Jean-Luc Picard became the captain of the USS Enterprise-D on “Star Trek The Next Generation.” Through 178 television episodes and four feature films, Picard became, arguably, the most popular character in the Star Trek Universe. Eighteen years after Picard’s last on-screen appearance, Michael Chabon has brought him back in the CBS All Access series “Star Trek Picard.”
St. Louis County Libraries Partnership
Partnered in 2022, the St. Louis County Libraries host public community events including book discussion groups and writing and art competitions.
Events to be announced.