- "Wonderfully and Fearfully Made: Sacred/Secular Portraits of the Preacher in Zora Neale Hurston's Jonah's Gourd Vine and King Vidor's Hallelujah"
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Dr. Leslie Wingard, Assistant Professor, College of Wooster
- "Voodoo and the Black Vernacular as Weapons of Resistance: Liberation Strategies in Their Eyes Were Watching God"
Dr. Babacar M'Baye, Associate Professor, Kent State University
- "Love and Marriage in Their Eyes Were Watching God and Tell my Horse"
Dr. Jennifer Freeman Marshall, Assistant Professor, Purdue University
- "From Zora Neale to Missionary Mary: Aesthetics of Faith and Freedom in Black Folk Art Folklore, and Literature"
Dr. Ada McKenzie, Assistant Professor, College of the Bahamas