1. Fifth Annual Pickens-Salley
Symposium on Southern Women
Thursday, March 8, 2007
6 p.m.
Etherredge Center
University of South Carolina Aiken
Dr. Williams’ book will be available for purchase and signing.
$22 for paperback and $30 for hardcover. Cash and checks accepted.
The symposium is open to the public at no charge. For more information, contact
Dr. Deidre Martin at 803-641-3448 or deidrem@usca.edu.
Following the Symposium Reception, you are invited to join us for a USC Aiken
Recital featuring women musicians and composers.
Dr. Susan Millar Williams will be the featured speaker,
discussing the biography she wrote about Peterkin, A Devil
and a Good Woman, Too: The Lives of Julia Peterkin. The
biography won the 1998 Julia Cherry Spruill Prize.
Julia Peterkin was a South Carolina plantation mistress
who vowed to “write what is, even if it is unpleasant.”
Praised by leaders of the Harlem Renaissance, who
considered her work ground-breaking, she found a way
to draw white readers into the lives of black farmhands.
Peterkin produced five books that revolutionized American
literature, including Scarlet Sister Mary, which won the
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1929.
A preview of a documentary film about Peterkin’s life will be shown
at the Symposium courtesy of Lightfoot Films.
The Life and Work of
Julia Peterkin
Special thanks to the American Association of University Women
for their support of this Symposium. A reception following the Symposium
will feature a celebration of the 125th
anniversary of AAUW.