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CATEGORIES:Lectures & Presentations
DESCRIPTION:Please join filmmaker\, Leslie Askew\, for an early screening o
 f her documentary In Search of Phillis Wheatley Peters\, which brings toget
 her historians\, literature scholars\, and cultural studies specialists to 
 spotlight\, in the 2026 US-founding anniversary year\, a vital figure of th
 e Revolutionary era. Following the screening there will be a roundtable dis
 cussion with selected students\, Leslie Askew\, and producer\, Turlough Whi
 te. This event is free and open to the public but registration is required.
  Please use the register link above.\n\nThis event is sponsored by: \n\nAdd
 Ran College of Liberal Arts\nCenter for Connection Culture\nCenter for Publ
 ic Education and Community Engagement\nDepartment of English\nJohn V. Roach
  Honors College\nLillian Radford Chair of Rhetoric and Composition\nLorrain
 e Sherley Professorship in Literature\nMary Couts Burnett Library\n\n \n\nW
 heatley (Peters) was the first Black woman to publish a book of poetry in N
 orth America. She achieved this milestone while still a teenager enslaved b
 y the Wheatley family in a region of the then-British colonies not always a
 ssociated with the history of slavery in the Americas—Massachusetts. She ha
 d arrived in Boston in 1761 while still a very young girl\, stolen from her
  family in West Africa\, and having somehow survived a Middle Passage journ
 ey that ended in death for many other captives on the same ship. Susanna an
 d John Wheatley purchased her on the Boston dock\, thereafter calling her b
 y the name of the ship\, The Phillis\, which had brought her to North Ameri
 ca.\n\nTraveling to London in 1773 to secure a publisher for her book when 
 efforts to raise adequate support in the Boston area fell short\, Wheatley 
 met an array of elites (including upper-crust British politicians and Benja
 min Franklin\, then living in England). She simultaneously enhanced her own
  position as a global celebrity with numerous prior publications of her wri
 ting having appeared in periodicals on both sides of the Atlantic. Returnin
 g to Boston to provide nursing care during the final days of her enslaver S
 usanna Wheatley’s life\, Phillis lived only a decade longer herself.\n\nThi
 s final period in the poet-activist’s life is one focus of Askew’s compelli
 ng documentary. The film presents new details from archive-digging by schol
 ars like historian Cornelia Dayton\, who chronicles Phillis’s experiences a
 fter being freed by the Wheatleys (under pressure from British abolitionist
 s) and marrying free Black entrepreneur John Peters. Though Wheatley Peters
  died tragically young\, without finding a publisher for her second book\, 
 she used her writings during this period to support a vision of the America
 n Revolution as a potential pathway to freedom for all. Her 1775 poem to Ge
 orge Washington—and the general’s appreciative written response to her—repr
 esents just one example of her determined efforts to exercise political age
 ncy during that challenging wartime period.\n\nWheatley Peters stands as an
  important reminder that Black women have always brought leadership to Amer
 ican communities and 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\, herself a Houston\, Texas\, native.\n\nBridging the time between Bl
 ack history month and women’s history month\, we are proud to host this exc
 iting documentary in spring 2026\, surely an important time to honor and le
 arn from stories like Wheatley Peters’s.
DTEND:20260304T020000Z
DTSTAMP:20260309T025122Z
DTSTART:20260304T003000Z
GEO:32.709897;-97.36457
LOCATION:Brown-Lupton University Union - BLUU\, Ballrooms A&B
SEQUENCE:0
SUMMARY:In Search of Phillis Wheatley Peters Film Screening and Discussion
UID:tag:localist.com\,2008:EventInstance_51517461232340
URL:https://calendar.tcu.edu/event/in-search-of-phillis-wheatley-peters-fil
 m-screening-and-discussion
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