BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:icalendar-ruby
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
X-WR-CALNAME:In Search of Phillis Wheatley Peters Film Screening and Discus
 sion
X-WR-TIMEZONE:Central Time (US & Canada)
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20261006T153251Z
UID:tag:localist.com\,2008:EventInstance_51517461232340
DTSTART:20260304T003000Z
DTEND:20260304T020000Z
DESCRIPTION:Please join filmmaker\, Leslie Askew\, for an early screening o
 f her documentary In Search of Phillis Wheatley Peters\, which brings toge
 ther historians\, literature scholars\, and cultural studies specialists t
 o spotlight\, in the 2026 US-founding anniversary year\, a vital figure of
  the Revolutionary era. Following the screening there will be a roundtable
  discussion with selected students\, Leslie Askew\, and producer\, Turloug
 h White. This event is free and open to the public but registration is req
 uired. Please use the register link above.\n\nThis event is sponsored by: 
 \n\nAddRan College of Liberal Arts\nCenter for Connection Culture\nCenter 
 for Public Education and Community Engagement\nDepartment of English\nJohn
  V. Roach Honors College\nLillian Radford Chair of Rhetoric and Compositio
 n\nLorraine Sherley Professorship in Literature\nMary Couts Burnett Librar
 y\n\n \n\nWheatley (Peters) was the first Black woman to publish a book of
  poetry in North America. She achieved this milestone while still a teenag
 er enslaved by the Wheatley family in a region of the then-British colonie
 s not always associated with the history of slavery in the Americas—Mass
 achusetts. She had arrived in Boston in 1761 while still a very young girl
 \, stolen from her family in West Africa\, and having somehow survived a M
 iddle Passage journey that ended in death for many other captives on the s
 ame ship. Susanna and John Wheatley purchased her on the Boston dock\, the
 reafter calling her by the name of the ship\, The Phillis\, which had brou
 ght her to North America.\n\nTraveling to London in 1773 to secure a publi
 sher for her book when efforts to raise adequate support in the Boston are
 a fell short\, Wheatley met an array of elites (including upper-crust Brit
 ish politicians and Benjamin Franklin\, then living in England). She simul
 taneously enhanced her own position as a global celebrity with numerous pr
 ior publications of her writing having appeared in periodicals on both sid
 es of the Atlantic. Returning to Boston to provide nursing care during the
  final days of her enslaver Susanna Wheatley’s life\, Phillis lived only
  a decade longer herself.\n\nThis final period in the poet-activist’s li
 fe is one focus of Askew’s compelling documentary. The film presents new
  details from archive-digging by scholars like historian Cornelia Dayton\,
  who chronicles Phillis’s experiences after being freed by the Wheatleys
  (under pressure from British abolitionists) and marrying free Black entre
 preneur John Peters. Though Wheatley Peters died tragically young\, withou
 t finding a publisher for her second book\, she used her writings during t
 his period to support a vision of the American Revolution as a potential p
 athway to freedom for all. Her 1775 poem to George Washington—and the ge
 neral’s appreciative written response to her—represents just one examp
 le of her determined efforts to exercise political agency during that chal
 lenging wartime period.\n\nWheatley Peters stands as an important reminder
  that Black women have always brought leadership to American communities a
 nd the US nation at large. And Texas—home to leaders like Barbara Jordan
  and our own city’s Opal Lee—is an ideal place to celebrate Phillis as
  one example among many through screening of this film by Leslie Askew\, h
 erself a Houston\, Texas\, native.\n\nBridging the time between Black hist
 ory month and women’s history month\, we are proud to host this exciting
  documentary in spring 2026\, surely an important time to honor and learn 
 from stories like Wheatley Peters’s.
GEO:32.709897;-97.36457
LOCATION:Brown-Lupton University Union - BLUU\, Ballrooms A&B
SUMMARY:In Search of Phillis Wheatley Peters Film Screening and Discussion
URL;VALUE=URI:https://calendar.tcu.edu/event/in-search-of-phillis-wheatley-
 peters-film-screening-and-discussion
CATEGORIES:Lectures & Presentations
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR