{"id":28512,"date":"2020-02-25T12:07:51","date_gmt":"2020-02-25T18:07:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=28512"},"modified":"2020-02-25T12:07:51","modified_gmt":"2020-02-25T18:07:51","slug":"apsu-asanbe-diversity-symposium-keynote-lecture-speaker-to-be-poet-artist-diversity-officer-colon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2020\/02\/25\/apsu-asanbe-diversity-symposium-keynote-lecture-speaker-to-be-poet-artist-diversity-officer-colon\/","title":{"rendered":"APSU Asanbe Diversity Symposium keynote lecture speaker to be poet, artist & diversity officer Col\u00f3n"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – During the 2016 Presidential Election, CNN sent reporters to Welch, West Virginia, for a piece on \u201cwhy America’s white working class feels left behind.\u201d The story painted Appalachia as a homogenous region, populated only by poor, white coal miners and farmers.<\/p>\n

But when Puerto Rican poet Ricardo Nazario y Col\u00f3n traveled through the area\u2019s wooded, rural hills, he noticed something different.<\/p>\n

\"Ricardo<\/a>

Ricardo Nazario y Col\u00f3n<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not homogenously white,\u201d he said on the PBS show Connections with Renee Shaw. \u201cIt is also diverse in languages, it\u2019s diverse in people, and the African American experience is very well known in Appalachia, to everybody in Appalachia. So how come it wasn\u2019t well known to individuals outside of Appalachia?\u201d<\/p>\n

Col\u00f3n, author of the poetry collection \u201cOf J\u00edbaros and Hillbillies,\u201d co-founded the Affrilachian Poets to defy \u201cthe persistent stereotype of a racially homogenized rural region.\u201d At 1:00pm on Wednesday, March 1th, he\u2019ll visit the Austin Peay State University (APSU) Morgan University Center, Room 303, to deliver the keynote lecture, \u201cA Puerto Rican\/Latinx Journey in Appalachia,\u201d at the 2020 Asanbe Diversity Symposium. At 2:30pm, he\u2019ll also participate in a panel discussion in that same room.<\/p>\n

The symposium, sponsored and organized by the APSU Department of Languages and Literature, was established 25 years ago in memory of Dr. Joseph Asanbe, the first professor of African and African-American literature at APSU. The event is co-sponsored by the Office of Academic Affairs, the Hispanic Cultural Center, the Honors Program, the African-American Studies Program, the International Studies Program, the Latin American Studies Program, the Women\u2019s and Gender Studies Program, the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts and the Hispanic Alumni Club.<\/p>\n

Col\u00f3n, a former U.S. Marine, is a published poet, artist, author, language teacher, and a former security analyst at Deutsche Bank. He now serves as Western Carolina University\u2019s (WCU) Chief Diversity Officer, and he is currently a doctoral candidate in Educational Leadership at WCU.<\/p>\n

He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Kentucky in Latin American Studies and Spanish Literature and a Master of Science from Pace University. In 2016, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper appointed Col\u00f3n to serve on the Governor\u2019s Advisory Council on Hispanic\/Latino Affairs.<\/p>\n

The Asanbe Diversity Symposium is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the APSU Department of Languages and Literature at 931.221.7891.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – During the 2016 Presidential Election, CNN sent reporters to Welch, West Virginia, for a piece on \u201cwhy America’s white working class feels left behind.\u201d The story painted Appalachia as a homogenous region, populated only by poor, white coal miners and farmers. But when Puerto Rican poet Ricardo Nazario y Col\u00f3n traveled through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[23,25395,2021,1355,262,512,825,18631],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-7pS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28512"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28512"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28513,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28512\/revisions\/28513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}