Zora Neale Hurston, path-breaking novelist, pioneering anthropologist and one of the first black women to enter the American literary canon (Their Eyes Were Watching God). This definitive film biography, eighteen years in the making, portrays Zora in all her complexity: gifted, flamboyant, and controversial but always fiercely original.

Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at the Sun intersperses insights from leading scholars and rare footage of the rural South (some of it shot by Zora herself) with re-enactments of a revealing 1943 radio interview. Hurston biographer, Cheryl Wall, traces Zora's unique artistic vision back to her childhood in Eatonville, Florida, the first all-black incorporated town in the U.S. There Zora was surrounded by proud, self-sufficient, self-governing black people, deeply immersed in African American folk traditions. Her father, a Baptist preacher, carpenter and three times mayor, reminded Zora every Sunday morning that ordinary black people could be powerful poets. Her mother encouraged her to "jump at de' sun," never to let being black and a woman stand in the way of her dreams.
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Teaching The Autobiography of Malcolm X as Literature: Haley and Shabazz in the Tradition of African American Narratives
Facilitator: Eisa Nefertari Ulen

Though many high school and college students are familiar with Malcolm’s autobiography, most read this important narrative as way to read history, the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements in particular, and the compelling story of one of the 20th century’s iconic leaders. African American readers, boys and young men especially, often gain inspiration and a kind of personal power from Malcolm’s honest and riveting tale of sudden and violent fatherlessness, subsequent broken family life, struggle within racist institutions, criminality, jail, redemption, ascent to leadership within the NOI, and the international component of his activism that resulted from his Hajj; Letter from Mecca; and journey through parts of Africa. The familiarity of it all, the sense that Malcolm’s story is their story too, nearly always compels a rich, dynamic, and even emotional reading of this personal narrative. Malcolm’s story is the story of the 20th century Black man in America. But it is also more than that. Malcolm’s narrative lies on a continuum of African American narratives stretching from slave narratives and early protest essays to the fiction of contemporary writers of African descent and even Hip Hop. This workshop will examine that legacy and suggest specific texts to read during one unit of African American Narratives.

Those books include:

Hip Hop Studies

Facilitator: Femi Lewis

Hip Hop is an artistic and cultural movement documenting urban African American and Caribbean thought of the Post Civil Rights Era. In this workshop, the following questions will be explored:
• How can we help students understand why it is important to study hip hop culture?
• How is hip hop an outgrowth of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements?
• How can we help students understand how hip hop is a reflection of not only social, cultural and political events, but is also an act of resistance against oppression?
• How can we help students read and write about hip hop and its historical, literary, and artistic significance in preparation for Regents examinations and college readiness?
This workshop will further the goals of the Mosaic Literary Conference because it will offer insight to educators and teaching artists on how to incorporate literature, art and history in the classroom. For parents, it will help them understand the connection between history and literature and how to help students become ready to ace standardized tests and hone reading and writing skills for college preparation.
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Malcolm X Through the Eyes of New Technology
Facilitator: Felicia Pride, BackList

The purpose of this interactive workshop is to introduce emerging media formats and technology as a means to teach, analyze and read literature in the classroom. Emerging media formats, such as digital video, transmedia, and social networking, encourage opportunities to bridge the gap between traditional instructional strategies and the rapidly evolving mixed media practices and technologies of today and tomorrow. For the purpose of this workshop, The Autobiography of Malcolm X will serve as the subject matter to show the synergy of mixed media formats and technology for engaging and educating youth. As a result of the workshop, participants will be able to develop their own mixed media lesson plans.
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Publishing a Literary Magazine to Spark Budding Readers and Writers
Facilitator: Gabrielle David

The workshop will show educators and participants how to create and publish a literary magazine to introduce reading and writing in their English Language Arts courses. Participants will be shown how to encourage HS students to create art and literary works; and typeset and layout the magazine using open source software and publishing the final product using print-on-demand. Total cost for the project? $39!
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Creating Dialogue: Using Plays as Tools to Initiate Conversation
Facilitator: Khadijah Ali-Coleman

Listen to the voice of Saartjie Baartman, the woman known as the Hottentot Venus, tell you her story of how her life became a horror tale of caged theatrics and dissection in a museum. Better yet, become Saartjie Baartman as you read her story in a dialogue between her and her South African sister in the stage play Deconstructing the Myth of the Booty. Why not write your own vignette depicting a satirical look at African-American life after reading the scene “Git On Board” in George C. Wolfe’s stage play The Colored Museum? Once writing your vignette, perform it as catalyst for a discussion on modern perceptions of slavery. After reading Jeff Stetson’s one act play “The Meeting”, imagine if the main characters Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X had their fictional meeting in 2010 after Rodney King, 9/11 and the election of the first Black president and write your own act featuring dialogue between the two characters.

In this session, learn how educators can use play-reading as a tool to initiate conversation and analysis of social mores. Educators, regardless of theatre experience, can effectively use plays as tools of engagement, providing youth the opportunity to critically think and synthesize information and personal opinion into creative art.
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Exposing Children to Multicultural Text Through the Literature and Arts of India
Facilitator: Nikita Hunter

In a growing global economy, giving children of color tools to navigate various cultural norms and traditions is paramount for their success. In using Indian culture to connect its arts to literacy, I hope to use my past Fulbright experience in India to inform participants of another approach for instruction within the English Language Arts. Participants will be introduced to traditional Indian dress, a sari and how to create art from colored salts, Rangoli . Participants will learn how to appropriately put on sarees that I have brought from India, and create a piece of Rangoli art and leave with two lessons, one for each cultural art form (Sari and Rangoli). Participants will also create a short piece of reflective writing on their experience with the Sari and Rangoli artforms. These lessons can be incorporated into English Language Arts lessons such as those that connect social studies to writing on ancient cultures. Essentially in this workshop I hope to provide information on a diverse culture, such as that of India, so that educators can equip children to succeed in a vastly growing global world.
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