The Institute for Signifying Scriptures will convene a national conference on U.S. communities of color as reading formations, especially in relationship to scriptures (understood as freighted but elastic shorthand for complex phenomena). The conference takes up such formations as windows open onto the self-understandings, and politics and orientations of these still differently marginalized complex communities in the shared context that is the United States and the common challenges of negotiating power and integration in relationship to the centering myth of America. Sessions will be organized around the reporting and discussion of implications of ethnographic and ethnological research covering the scripturalizing practices of African American, Arab American, Asian American, Latino/a American, and Native American communities.

Richard Rodriguez, award-winning journalist, prolific essayist, and author of Brown: The Last Discovery of America (2002), will give the keynote address. Special Performances including the Ernie Watts Quartet

Pre-registration deadline: September 30, 2009
Registration may be completed either online or by direct mail-in-check to ISS
  (Please note: online registrations will be charged a processing fee)
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For further information contact:
Vincent L. Wimbush, Conference Convener
Director
Institute for Signifying Scriptures
Claremont Graduate University
1017 N. Dartmouth Ave.
Claremont, CA 91711
iss@cgu.edu
Ph: (909) 607-9676