ReVIEWING Black Mountain College (W. Jason Miller)

ReVIEWING Black Mountain College conference is a forum for scholars and artists to contribute original work on topics related to Black Mountain College and its place in cultural history.

The format is designed to be interdisciplinary, with sessions that will include panels, presentations, performances, and workshops. BMC itself was a uniquely interdisciplinary organization, generating output from its faculty and students that often involved the melding of the visual, performing, and literary arts. Each year, conference participation reflects this; past presentations have explored wide-ranging, fruitful intersections such as (to name just a few of the most recent examples) how Charles Olson’s “projectivist” poetics inspired works on the stage and screen; the influence of choreographer Merce Cunningham on Abstract Expressionist painters trained at BMC such as Pat Passlof and James Bishop; the photography of poet-publisher-artist Jonathan Williams; the path from BMC’s first Summer Institute in honor of Arnold Schoenberg, to the design and philosophy of contemporary summer arts programs today; a performance connecting Ruth Asawa’s sculpture to contemporary dance; and a workshop offering attendees the opportunity to weave on looms with found materials, as Anni Albers’ BMC students did.

The conference is hosted annually in the fall. Proposals on any theme related to Black Mountain College and its legacy are encouraged and will be considered, and, in the spirit of BMC, the conference challenges disciplinary boundaries, and invites contributions of all genres: performances, panels, multi-media proposals, and workshops are welcome.

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Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood

Nina Simone, Langston Hughes, and the Birth of Black Power

by W. Jason Miller

248 pp., 30 halftones

ISBN 978-1-4696-9821-2 $30.00 cloth

Publication date: September 29, 2026

For more information: https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469698212/dont-let-me-be-misunderstood/