In the fall of 2019, Dr. Jen Ferguson (Visiting Assistant Professor of English, Loyola Marymount University) and Dr. Rebecca Mouser began a conference program designed to promote inclusion at Missouri Southern State University and begin difficult dialogues surrounding diversity in higher education. Our goal was to strategize best practices for a decolonization project. We titled the project “The Whole Story: A Decolonial, Cross-Cultural Day Institute” and held several hands-on, small-group sessions that centered around historically marginalized voices. Additionally, through intensive fundraising efforts, the conference established an endowed scholarship for BIPOC students with a primary focus on English majors and minors. Our goal is to make this conference an annual event, and so we have expanded its scope to include all departments at the university.
Please click the link below to watch the webinars:
There is no registration for this event, but donations to the Clark and Marina Pepper Scholarship are most welcome at the link provided.
www.mssu.edu/giving-the-whole-story
Our Speaker:
Dr. Christopher Okonkwo is currently an Associate Professor of English at the University of Missouri in Columbia. He is a comparatist whose research, scholarship, and teaching address the intersecting histories, cultures, and literary productions of Anglophone Africa and the African Diaspora, particularly fiction and nonfiction produced during the 20 th and 21 st centuries. Recent publications have appeared in College Literature and Researching African Literatures. Dr. Okonkwo's forthcoming book, Kindred Spirits: Chinua Achebe and Toni Morrison, is due out this spring from the University of Virginia Press.
