Local and international academics, writers, performers and directors are gathering at The Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences Research at Manchester Metropolitan University from 7th-10th September to review the history and passage of Barack Obama’s first Presidential term. Right now is a very critical time in Obama’s tenure, given the recent BP oil disaster, and the ongoing challenges to American foreign and economic policy, at home and abroad.

This interdisciplinary conference – Texting Obama: Politics/Poetics/Popular Culture – celebrates and interrogates Obama’s emergence and influence on politics and culture, paying particular attention to the diverse range of representations and meanings attached to him in contemporary world culture – as a person, as an icon and as a phenomenon; as well as the marketing and representation of Obama, his wife Michelle, and the substantial media investment in tracing their family inheritance and genealogies.

Keynote speakers include Simon Gikandi (Princeton), David Theo Goldberg (California), Carl Pedersen (Copenhagen), Shirley Tate (Leeds) and Patricia J. Williams (Columbia). The speakers will address a variety of topics including Obama’s African, Hawaiian and Indonesian inheritances; what he means to a ‘post-Katrina’ America; the specific use of web and new media technologies in his Presidential campaign; and how questions of class as well as race shape the reception of both Obama and his family.

Other visiting speakers will investigate the startling popular success of his autobiography, ‘Dreams From My Father’; or will explore the diverse range of novels, films, cartoons, street art and music that have been produced about Obama and his family in the short period since his surprise emergence into the popular imagination.

A special feature of the conference is its collaboration with a variety of regional and national organisations including the New Black Arts Alliance, the English Subject Centre in London and the Northwest Film Archive at MMU. The conference showcases a range of community-focused cultural events which includes workshops, readings and screenings with Carol Ann Duffy, Jackie Kay, Bonnie Greer, SuAndi, Lemn Sissay and Karen Gabay (the director of the award winning film, Moving Memories – Tales of Moss side and Hulme). The English Subject Centre is sponsoring a special session on ‘Teaching, Texting and Twittering Obama’ that will be of interest to teachers everywhere, while a related schools event in collaboration with the Association for Creative Writing in English (ACWE) will take the general themes of the conference into a range of local schools with special workshops for students following the conclusion of the conference.

A full conference programme and details of registration and booking are available at: http://textingobama.co.uk/