November 20, 2009: English Department In-Progress Scholarship presents Prof. Courtney Marshall, 'A Curtain of Secrecy': Zora Neale Hurston and the Trial of Ruby McCollum 
The UNH English Department presents the second event in our In-Progress Scholarship series for the 2009-2010 academic year. This series gives UNH English Department faculty the opportunity to present current research to their colleagues and the University community.
On Friday, November 20th, Prof. Courtney Marshall will present a talk titled 'A Curtain of Secrecy': Zora Neale Hurston and the Trial of Ruby McCollum at 1:00 in Hamilton Smith Hall, room 101.
In 1952, the Pittsburgh Courier, an African-American newspaper, wrote to Zora Neale Hurston urging her to go to the segregated town of Live Oak, Florida, to report on the murder trial of Ruby McCollum. Hurston's news articles participate in the production of truth about the case and point out how the law's practices of power participate in meaning making by obscuring certain subject positions. Prof. Marshall's essay seeks to reconsider the meaning of black women's visibility as legal and journalistic subjects and the more general politics of cultural memory itself.
