Oneonta Literary Festival Opens with Sheena Mason Book Launch
ONEONTA—Dr. Sheena Mason will open the year-long Oneonta Literary Festival on Wednesday, October 9 with a reading and discussion with Dr. Howard Ashford of Mason’s new book, “The Raceless Antiracist: Why Ending Race Is the Future of Antiracism.” The event will take place at 7 p.m. in the Craven Lounge of SUNY Oneonta’s Morris Conference Center. The public is cordially invited, and admission is free to this and all other Oneonta Literary Festival events. The book will be available for purchase and signing.
Drs. Mason and Ashford will discuss Dr. Mason’s new bookand how it will join the national conversation on race, racism, and antiracism. During their fireside chat, Dr. Mason will present the Togetherness Wayfinder, a toolkit that enables and empowers people to unify, heal, and reconcile across differences more effectively than traditional methods. She will also read selections from the book and invite audience participation with a question-and-answer session.
Dr. Sheena Michele Mason is assistant professor of English at SUNY Oneonta. She holds a PhD with distinction in English from Howard University in Washington, D.C., and specializes in Africana and American literary studies and philosophy of race. She is published with Oxford University Press, Palgrave MacMillan, Cambridge University Press, and the University of Warsaw, among other presses. She is the innovator of the Togetherness Wayfinder (formerly and alternatively called the theory of racelessness) and founder of Togetherness Wayfinder, an educational firm. Her new book shows how ending our belief in “race” and the practice of racialization is required toward the goal of ending the causes and effects of racialized dehumanization.
Professor E. Howard Ashford is an associate professor of history at SUNY Oneonta. He holds five degrees, including a PhD in Afro-American studies from the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at UMass Amherst. His first monograph, “Mississippi Zion: The Struggle for Liberation in Attala County, 1865-1915” (https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/M/Mississippi-Zion) examined how African American utilization of their power fueled the necessity for the Jim Crow apparatuses that came to define the U.S. South. The book won the Mississippi Historical Society Book of the Year Award and the Anna Julia Cooper & C.L.R. James Award from the National Council for Black Studies. Ashford has published two articles and four book reviews. He has served as a manuscript reader for several academic presses including Cambridge University Press. He served as the interim director of the Center for Racial Justice and Inclusive Excellence at SUNY Oneonta and was the historian and archivist for the Harlem River Preservation Project.
The Oneonta Literary Festival continues Thursday, October 17 through Monday, October 21 with a series of readings and book signings by 11 noted writers, a poetry slam, an Author Expo fair featuring local authors, plus poetry and prose writing workshops. Consult these websites for complete schedules:
https://suny.oneonta.edu/english/literary-festival
The Oneonta Literary Festival2024-2025 is hosted by SUNY Oneonta, Hartwick College, Huntington Memorial Library, the Community Arts Network of Oneonta, the Oneonta City School District, Green Toad Bookstore, and the B-Side Ballroom and Supper Club.
For more information, contact Suzanne.Black@oneonta.edu or festb@hartwick.edu