Panel Descriptions
THURSDAY, MAY 21, 2026
PANEL 1:
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Grounded in Care and Critique: Deborah McDowell’s Scholarship, Leadership, and Writing
This panel celebrates the multifaceted impact of Deborah McDowell’s scholarship, exemplified in her extraordinary memoir, Leaving Pipe Shop (1996), but also in her editorial leadership, pedagogy, and institution-building. The panelists affirm the continued relevance and enduring legacy of McDowell’s scholarship as a blueprint to live through personal loss and grief, to stay vigilant amid renewed attacks on Black Studies, and to remain committed to the ‘care work’ that sustains us, our institutions, and our communities.
KEYNOTE CONVERSATION:
3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
This keynote brings Deborah McDowell to the stage to reflect on her illustrious career through a structured conversation with LaTaSha Levy (Howard University) and Nicole Burrowes (Rutgers University), former Woodson fellows, long-time colleauges, and close friends. The discussion represents an extension of an oral history project that Levy and Burrowes launched to honor McDowell’s career which has collected over two hours of video interviews to date. The conversation will showcase highlights from these interviews and touch on the conference’s major themes of scholarship, teaching, mentorship, institution building, friendship and community.
FRIDAY, MAY 22, 2026
PANEL 2:
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Memory, Mourning, and Moral Commitment: the Pioneering Scholarship of Deborah McDowell
This panel engages Deborah McDowell’s memoir, Leaving Pipe Shop (1996), and her path-breaking co-edited volumes Slavery and the Literary Imagination (1989), The Punitive Turn: New Approaches to Race and Incarceration (2013) and her series of state-of-the-field essays, from the 1980s to 2024. In doing so, the panelists address how McDowell’s generous and insightful editorial critiques - with her work and with their own - have transformed our thinking about Black place-making, the preservation of Black life, and public memories of slavery and its afterlives.
PANEL 3:
10:45 AM - 12:15 PM
“Doing the Work:” Deborah McDowell’s Institution Building, Leadership and Legacy
This panel speaks directly to Deborah McDowell’s transformative Directorship of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American & African Studies (2008-2021). Centering Professor McDowell’s Black feminist intellectual theory and praxis, panelists highlight the remarkable expansion and reformulation of the fellowship program, the vast array of conferences, symposia, and lecture series, and the elevation of the interdisciplinary program to departmental status.
PANEL 4:
1:15 PM – 2:45 PM
In Class with Deborah McDowell: Reflections on McDowell’s Transformative Teaching
This panel celebrates the impact that Deborah McDowell has had on her students. Panelists from across her career will reflect on the “transformative” lessons they have learned from Professor McDowell and discuss how they continue to carry those lessons into their lives and work.
PANEL 5:
3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Lessons, Ethics, and Transnational Crossings: Mentorship as a Practice of Freedom
Toni Morrison believed the role of a mentor is that “…if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.” Deborah McDowell mentored students in all levels of education from high school to graduate school. The paper presentations in this session highlight the varied ways her role as mentor “freed and empowered somebody else” including the presenters themselves. Her mentorship shaped and refined her students’ voice, incorporated the value of hospitality, provided intellectual support and made international impact.
SATURDAY, MAY 22, 2026
PANEL 6:
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Deborah McDowell as Editor: Getting Black Women into Print
The emergence of Black feminist criticism in the 1980s would not have been possible without the editors and presses who saw fit to print or reprint dozens of works by Black women writers. Nella Larsen scholar Thadious Davis will kick off this panel with comments on Deborah's edition of Quicksand and Passing (Rutgers UP, 1986), notable for its prescient queer reading of the latter novel. Maria Giulia Fabi, a professor at the University of Ferrara, will follow up by discussing the international impact of this edition along with Deborah’s edition of a Pauline Hopkins novel. Ianna Owen, Gayle Jones scholar, will then share a few thoughts on Beacon's hugely important Black Women Writers series (1985-1993). After three papers on Deborah’s earliest contributions, we will close with one on her current editorial work. Beth Colón, Africana acquisitions editor with the UVA Press, will speak to Deborah's role as co-editor of its Black Studies at Work in the World series.
PANEL 7:
10:45 AM - 12:15 PM
Deborah McDowell’s Activism in Every-Day Life
This session was inspired by the three-day symposium sponsored by the Woodson Institute in the spring of 2009 entitled: “The Problem of Punishment: Race, Inequality, and Justice.” Now, we will hear from former students who will explain more about how Professor McDowell encouraged their thinking about activism and scholarship. Panelists detail how Deborah McDowell’s scholarly and societal activism impacted their own scholarship and personal lives. In papers that range from historical studies of market women in Lagos, Nigeria, incarcerated Black women and girls at Mississippi’s Parchman Penitentiary, Black Women’s personal and political narratives during the Black Power era, to COVID-era pedagogical activism amidst nation-wide protests of the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, panelists reflect on Professor McDowell’s expansive understanding of activism in every-day life.
PANEL 8:
1:15 PM – 2:45 PM
In Good Times and Bad Times: Deborah McDowell’s Friendship as Treasured Gift
Deborah McDowell often remarks on friendship as one of the most special forms of relation for its depth of connection, its interpersonal intersubjectivity, and its necessarily affirmative nature; one chooses to befriend and to be a friend. This panel weaves together a set of friends and colleagues from across generations and geography to share memories, testimonies, and reflections on the treasured gift of Deborah E. McDowell’s friendship.
PANEL 9:
3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Deborah McDowell as Local Community Member: A Roundtable
Deborah McDowell’s influence transcends her pioneering work at the University of Virginia as a scholar of African American letters and as an institution builder. Beyond the university, Deborah has been an inspiration locally, intent on ensuring that the community she inhabits flourishes because of her presence. This roundtable will commemorate McDowell’s indelible contributions to the local Charlottesville community. In addition to Deborah’s impact on our shared civic life, speakers will reflect on the ripple effects that her local activities have had on the state of Virginia and the world beyond. Participants who have worked with Professor McDowell on philanthropy, social and racial equity, the preservation of historic sites and local heritage, the protection of records and archives, as well as known her as a mentor will join a conversation about her transformative practice of local citizenship.