Keynote Speakers

Friday, February 3, 2012 – Opening Reception

Jonathan Green

World renowned artist

South Carolinian

Jonathan Green has a passion for creating and collecting cross-cultural fine art representing the themes of work, love, belonging and spirituality.  He is also committed to promoting cross cultural arts to be included in mainstream museums throughout the United States and Europe.

He has a drive to enhance the visibility, perceptions, and recognition of professional visual artists of African American, Caribbean, Latin American descent for their cultural contributions to this nation.  He strives to show such contributions as they are specifically noted in the use of the artists’ creations in the areas of education, health, performing arts, business, and the environment.

Noted art critics and reviewers consider Jonathan Green one of the most important painters of the southern experience. His work, which has been exhibited in major venues nationally and internationally, reflects an intrinsic sense of history and place. Website

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Saturday, February 4, 2012 – Workshops

Tracey Weldon-Stewart, Ph.D.

Associate Professor (English), University of South Carolina

Ph.D., The Ohio State University, 1998

Dr. Tracey Weldon is an associate professor in the English Department and the Linguistics Program at the University of South Carolina. A native of Columbia, SC, she graduated from W. J. Keenan High School in 1987, received her B.A. in French and English from Furman University in 1991, and completed her PhD in linguistics at The Ohio State University in 1998. She taught at North Carolina State University from 1995 to 2000 and joined the USC faculty in 2000.

Dr. Weldon is a quantitative sociolinguist, specializing in American dialects, with a particular focus on Gullah and African American English. She teaches both graduate and undergraduate classes in linguistics, including African American English, Language and Gender, Survey of Linguistics, and Varieties of American English. She is currently working on a book, under contract with Cambridge University Press, on the use of African American English by middle class speakers.

For her presentation on the theme of “Language, Literacy, and the African American Student,” Dr. Weldon will discuss the issue of dialects in schools, with a particular focus on African American English. Topics to be covered include the following:

•African American English: Separating Fact from Fiction

•The structure, history, and use of African American English

•Attitudes toward African American English

•Dialect in Schools

*The Oakland Ebonics controversy

*Philosophies regarding the teaching of Standard English

*Alternative strategies to the teaching of reading/writing