Speakers & Panels

A full lineup of speakers and panels for Switchyard and The World of Bob Dylan. Dates, times and locations included. All events will be at the Hyatt Regency Tulsa Downtown.


Switchyard Keynote Speakers

Gender Queer:
A Memoir

May 31 | 7 p.m.
Promenade Ballroom

An Evening with Art Spiegelman

May 30 | 6:30 p.m.
Promenade Ballroom

Ground Truth

June 1 | 7 p.m.
Greenwood Cultural Center

Photo: M Ruddell
Photo: Enno Kapitza

Maia Kobabe discusses Gender Queer, the acclaimed graphic novel about what it means to be nonbinary and asexual that has won awards and earned the top spot for the most challenged book for 2021-22.

Included in the Ideas Track & Full Festival Pass

Learn more here.

Art Spiegelman will be in conversation with Ted Genoways, editor of the new Switchyard magazine, for a probing conversation about book banning and art’s enduring obligation to tell us even the most agonizing truths.

Included in the Ideas Track & Full Festival Pass

Learn more here.

The 19th US Poet Laureate, Natasha Tretheway will unveil an entirely new work that brings her distinctive use of history and poetry to bear on Tulsa’s violent past. 

Presented by the Black Wall Street Legacy Festival.

This event is free and open to the public. It is also included in the Ideas Track & Full Festival Pass

Learn more here.

Researching Into the Void

May 30 | 5 p.m.
Promenade Ballroom

Echoes from the Borderlands

June 4 | 1:30 p.m.
Horton Records Stage

Felon: An American Washi Tale

June 1 | 5 p.m.
Horton Records Stage

Photo: Diego Berruecos
Photo: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Rebecca Makkai’s works explore the mysteries and forgotten parts of history, from activist social movements to more intimate family histories, taking readers on journeys of exploration and recovery.

Included in the Ideas Track & Full Festival Pass

Learn more here.

Valeria Luiselli will collaborate with sound and film artists to create an immersive journey along the US-Mexico border.

Included in the Ideas Track & Full Festival Pass

Learn more here.

Reginald Dwayne Betts will perform a solo show based on Felon, a fierce, agile collection of poems that confronts the funk of post-incarceration existence and creates new forms from the redactions of his own court record.

Included in the Ideas Track & Full Festival Pass

Learn more here.

An Evening with Ilya Kaminsky

May 31 | 5 p.m.
Promenade Ballroom

Hidden Histories: A Conversation

May 31 | 12 p.m.
Promenade Ballroom

A Reading with Katie Farris

June 1 | 10 a.m.
Promenade Ballroom

Photo: Georgia Tech
Photo: Beowulf Sheehan

Ilya Kaminksy gives a performative reading at Switchyard will transform the way you think about language, sound, and beauty.  He will be in conversation with Boris Dralyuk, Presidential Professor at TU.

Included in the Ideas Track & Full Festival Pass

Read more here.

Lawyer, author, and essayist Alex Marzano-Lesnevich mixes memoir with true crime in the Lambda Award-winning book, The Fact of a Body, which challenges us to pick through the tangled knots of our personal and shared histories. 

Included in the Ideas Track & Full Festival Pass

Poet, translator, editor, and fiction writer, Katie Farris creates fluid hybrid forms that seek to carry readers across imaginative thresholds. She will be in conversation with Kaveh Bassiri, Tulsa Artist Fellow 

Included in the Ideas Track & Full Festival Pass

Read more here.


World of Dylan Keynote Speakers

An Evening with Margo Price

June 2 | 6:30 p.m.
Promenade Ballroom

Noir Tones in 21st-Century Dylan

June 3 | 11 a.m.
Promenade Ballroom

Photo: Alysse Gafkjen
Photo: Ida Lodemel Tvedt

Margo Price sits down with musician and journalist Jeff Slate to talk about the joys and agonies of songwriting.

This event is included in the World of Bob Dylan Track and the Full Festival pass.

Greil Marcus offers new insight into Dylan’s extraordinary recent work and the surprising cinematic turns it takes in “The Night We Called It a Day,” TriplicateShadow Kingdom, “Murder Most Foul,” and other spots on the Dylan map.

This event is included in the World of Bob Dylan Track and the Full Festival pass.

Museums Are Vulgar: Bob Dylan and Dishabituation

June 2 | 11 a.m.
Promenade Ballroom

Coming of Age in the Greenwich Village Folk Revival, 1954-1971

June 3 | 5:30 p.m.
Horton Records Stage

Photo: Harvard Law School
Photo: Franco Vogt

Cass Sunstein‘s talk explores the cultural and historical processes that transformed Bob Dylan from a niche folksinger with an unusual voice into an international star and Nobel Laureate.

This event is included in the World of Bob Dylan Track and the Full Festival pass.

With a mix of music, memories and Bob Dylan encounters, Happy Traum discusses coming of age in Greenwich Village during the folk revival, a mid-century cauldron of creativity.

This event is included in the World of Bob Dylan Track and the Full Festival pass.


Switchyard Panels

Twenty-First Century Book Bans

May 30 | 12 p.m.
Promenade Ballroom

Open to All: Fighting Book Bans in Oklahoma

May 30 | 1:30 p.m.
Promenade Ballroom

Free Speech on Campus

May 30 | 3 p.m.
Promenade Ballroom

Jeff Martin, Booksmart Tulsa

William Johnson, Director, PEN Across America

Michelle Simmons, Dennis R. Neill Equality Center

Jeff Martin, Booksmart Tulsa

Onikah Asamoa-Caesar, Fulton Street Books

Victoria Moore, Whitty Books

Adam Steinbaugh, Staff Attorney, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

Jonathan Friedman, PEN America

George Justice, Provost, University of Tulsa

Mutant as Metaphor: The X-Men at 60

May 31 | 10 a.m.
Promenade Ballroom

What Was Lost: Constructing a 3D Portrait of 1921 Greenwood

May 31 | 2 p.m.
Promenade Ballroom

On the Inside with Poetic Justice: Art and Stories by Incarcerated Women

June 1 | 11:30 a.m.
Promenade Ballroom

Danny Fingeroth, Comic Book Writer and Biographer of Stan Lee 

Jimmie Trammel, The Tulsa World 

R.A. Jones, Writer & Editor

David Surratt, The University of Oklahoma

Audra Burch, National Enterprise Correspondent, The New York Times 

Randy Krehbiel, Staff Writer, The Tulsa World 

Haeyoun Park, Deputy Editor, The New York Times 

Yuliya Parshina-Kotta, Visual Journalist, The New York Times 

Anjali Singhhvi, Graphics Editor, The New York Times 

Lisa Loftus, Photographer  

Ellen Stackable, Executive Director, Poetic Justice 


World of Dylan Panels

A1. Dylan’s Early Influences

June 1 | 1 p.m.
Oklahoma Ballroom

A2. Dylan the Filmmaker

June 1 | 1 p.m.
Tulsa North

A3. Murder Most Foul: Bob Dylan and the JFK Assassination

June 1 | 1 p.m.
Promenade Ballroom

Robert Russell, Bob Dylan and the Stanley Brothers 

Wayne Robins, Another Self Portrait (1969-1971): Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley 

Jim Windolf, Bob Dylan and the Beatles: Disciples of Little Richard 

Leighton Grist, ‘It Is What It Is’: Scorsese and Dylan 

Ethan Warren, Series of Dreams: Dylan as Auteur 

Godfrey Jordan 

Danny Fingeroth 

Jeff Fallis 

Salvatore Fallica 

Harold Lepidus 

B1. Dylan and Ginsberg

June 1 | 3 p.m.
Tulsa North

B2. Woody Guthrie’s Expansive Reach

June 1 | 3 p.m.
Oklahoma Ballroom

B3. Close Encounters of the Bob Kind

June 1 | 3 p.m.
Promenade Ballroom

Stevan Weine, My Generation Destroyed: Dylan and Ginsberg in Witness 

Sam Kashner

Holly George (chair) 

Chris Buhalis 

Court Carney 

Michele Fazio 

Mark F. Fernandez 

Aimee Zoeller 

Richard Bolton Williams Boltax 

Collingsworth Swan 

S.S. Solinsky 

Malcolm Loeb 

Ricky Vermont 

C1. Locating Dylan

June 2 | 9 a.m.
Tulsa North

C2. Fame and Fandom

June 2 | 9 a.m.
Oklahoma Ballroom

C3. Creative Intersections

June 2 | 9 a.m.
Promenade Ballroom

Jon Lasser, Rumplezimmerman, Alchemy, and Dylan’s Bidirectional European Influences 

Kathleen Hudson, Dylan and Texas: Stories and Songs 

Rob Hurd, Romance in Durango and Tales of Yankee Power: Dylan’s Border Music 

Bob Keyes, Robbed By an Autopen: Bob Dylan’s Use of a Signature Machine Isn’t Unusual, But It’s Still Fraud 

Skip Dine Young and Bill Bettler, Virtue and Vice in the Reception of Dylan’s Gospel Trilogy 

Rebecca Slaman, Come Writers and Critics 

Bob Egan, Bob Dylan: A Life as Seen through PopSpots 

Christine Jones, ‘Dollitics’ and ‘Dylantics:’ Folk Music and The Political Rhetoric of Dolly Parton and Bob Dylan 

Cathy Chesley, Bob Dylan and the Algorithms of Creative Genius 

C4. The Art and Philosophy of The Philosophy of Modern Song

June 2 | 9 a.m.
Horton Records Stage

D1. The Philosophy of Modern Song and the Ambi-Modernist Impulse

June 2 | 1:30 p.m.
Promenade Ballroom

D2. Multimedia Dylan

June 2 | 1:30 p.m.
Oklahoma Ballroom

Elizabeth Cantalamessa, Art is a Disagreement: Authorship and Responsibility in The Philosophy of Modern Song 

Graley Herren, Mr. Tambo and Mr. Bones, Play a Song for Me: Foster and Poe in Dylan’s ‘Nelly Was a Lady’ Chapter 

Laura Tenschert, ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’: Bob Dylan’s Theory of Art in The Philosophy of Modern Song 

Erin C. Callahan, ‘Lame as Hell and a Big Trick’: Dylan’s Comment on the Commodification of Art in The Philosophy of Modern Song 

Court Carney, ‘The Laws of Time Didn’t Apply to You’: The Philosophy of Modern Song and the Zeitgeist of the Discontent 

Jim Salvucci, ‘The Future for Me is Already a Thing of the Past’: The Seeming Nostalgia of The Philosophy of Modern Song 

Steve Paul, ‘Put My Guns in the Ground’: Bob Dylan, Billy the Kid and Hollywood’s Western Delirium 

Salvatore J. Fallica, Bob Dylan and Pseudo-event Culture 

Malu Barroso, ‘I Contain Multitudes’: The Bob Dylan Cinematic Universe 

D3. Deep Dives

June 2 | 1:30 p.m.
Horton Records Stage

D4. Dylan’s Rage

June 2 | 1:30 p.m.
Tulsa North

E1. Talking Dylan—The Bob Dylan Podcasters

June 2 | 3:30 p.m.
Promenade Ballroom

Ron Radosh, Truth, History and Myth: Bob Dylan’s take on the Cold War trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg 

Nathan C. Blue, Bob Dylan and ‘Jim Jones at Botany Bay’ 

Francisco Espinoza, I Got New Eyes: ‘Highlands’ and the Sense of an Album Ending 

Paul Haney, Blood on Your Saddle: Bob Dylan’s Homicidal Voices 

Matt Simonsen, Anger Through Life: Bob Dylan and the Tale of the Angry Epics 

Richard B. Westlein, Twelve Rounds with Bob Dylan: The Pugilistic Poet 

Craig DanuloffDylan.FM 

Rob Kelly PodDylan 

Laura TenschertDefinitely Dylan 

Daniel MacKayHard Rain and Slow Trains 

E2. Judgements

June 2 | 3:30 p.m.
Tulsa North

E3. Following Dylan

June 2 | 3:30 p.m.
Oklahoma Ballroom

E4. Archiving American Sound

June 2 | 3:30 p.m.
Horton Records Stage

D.J. Chatelaine, More Popular Than Jesus: The Prophetic Messages of Bob Dylan and The Beatles 

John M. Radosta, The Loveliest and the Best: The Tapestry of Influence of Omar Khayyám’s Rubai’yat on the Works of Bob Dylan 

Jeffrey Edward Green, Never Could Learn to Drink that Blood and Call it Wine: Bob Dylan as Prophet of the Postsecular 

Toby Thompson, Interviewing Dylan’s Mom: Lunch with Beatty Zimmerman 

Godfrey Jordan, N.E.T. 3025—Ireland 2019 

Toby Daspit, Bob Dylan as Curriculum Theorist: A Theme Time Radio Hour Interactive Currere Experience 

Barry Ollman, Paper Chase! Collecting and Connecting Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, and Bob Dylan 

F1. 116 MacDougal: The Movie, Live Presentation Excerpt

June 3 | 9 a.m.
Promenade Ballroom

F2. Collaborations

June 3 | 9 a.m.
Oklahoma Ballroom

F3. One Upon a Time: Bob Dylan Illuminated through Three Temporal Frames

June 3 | 9 a.m.
Tulsa North 

Ross Wylde 

Dave Anthiny Buglione 

Matt Westin 

JJ Mason 

Douglas Tjelmeland 

Lynda Schneider (chair) 

Scott Bunn, Recitations on Waitresses & Art Within Terry Allen’s ‘The Beautiful Waitress’ and Bob Dylan’s ‘Highlands’ 

Ray Padgett, ‘Pledging My Time’: Conversations with Bob Dylan Band Members, A Book Preview 

Harold Lepidus, Dylan & The Dead Reconsidered: Goin’ Down the Road, Feelin’ Rad 

Anne-Marie Mai, Time Slots in Dylan’s Songs and Visual Art 

Nina Goss, Today and Tomorrow and Yesterday, Too: Rough and Rowdy Ways/‘Murder Most Foul,’ Bob Dylan, and Late-Style Studies 

Robert Reginio, “Oh, Help Me in My Weakness”: Entreaties and the Dissolution of Communal Time in John Wesley Harding 

F4. Rough and Rowdy

June 3 | 9 a.m.
Horton Records Stage

G1. Dylan’s Writing Process

June 3 | 1:30 p.m.
Oklahoma Ballroom

G2. Humor

June 3 | 1:30 p.m.
Horton Records Stage

Robert H. Cataliotti, ‘The Key to the Highway Is the Key to the Cosmos’: The Blues Aesthetic in Rough and Rowdy Ways, Shadow Kingdom, and The Philosophy of Modern Song 

Fabio Fantuzzi, Rough and Rowdy Ways: Memory and History in Bob Dylan’s Late Narrative Songs 

Garin Cycholl, (Tulsa) Time out of (COVID) Mind 

Michael Sauve, Born in Time: Conditional Tenses and the Changin’ Lyrics of Bob Dylan 

Jim O’Brien, ‘When I Paint my Masterpiece’ – Bob Dylan as Poet of the Renaissance 

Owen Boynton, Bob Dylan and Enjambment 

Daniel Radosh, It Takes a Lot to Laugh: Bob Dylan as Humorist 

Harrison Hewitt, How Long Can We Falsify and Deny What Is Real: Bob Dylan is the Funniest Person Alive, and Why We Need to Talk About It 

Danny Fingeroth, The Comic Book and Me: Bob Dylan and Comics 

G3. Dylan’s Sound

June 3 | 1:30 p.m.
Tulsa North

G4. The Problematic Genius

June 3 | 1:30 p.m.
Promenade Ballroom

H1. I Read the Scriptures a Lot

June 4 | 9:30 a.m.
Tulsa North

Simon Harel, Ventriloquism and Influences in Early Dylan’s Voices 

Michael Hacker, Know Your Song Well: Bob Dylan’s Singing Voice 

J. Matthew Martin, Canon at Last? Re-visiting the Album ‘Dylan’ in Light of ‘Another Self Portrait,’ ‘Travelin’ Thru,’ and ‘1970’ 

Stephen Daniel Arnoff  

Kathryn Lofton 

Mark Montgomery French 

Henning Emil Magnusson, ‘Sometimes my burden seems more than I can bear’” Dylan’s Use of Old Testament Wisdom Literature on Time Out of Mind 

Jeffrey Lamp, ‘God Said to Abraham’: Can Bob Dylan Help Us (Re-)Read the Bible? 

H2. Infinity on Trial

June 4 | 9:30 a.m.
Horton Records Stage

H3. Violent Ends

June 4 | 9:30 a.m.
Oklahoma Ballroom

I1. Ancient Sources

June 4 | 11:30 a.m.
Horton Records Stage

Laura Tenschert  

Susan Scarberry-García, A Vision of Wheels: Bob Dylan’s Rail Car and Leo Tolstoy’s Bicycle 

Raphael Falco, Unheard Melodies: Ekphrasis and Possible Gaze in Dylan’s Lyrics 

Scott M. Marshall, From Medgar to Bobby, Midnight Summer Blue–Fall, Winter, Spring–John, Malcolm, & Martin, in the Daylight Too 

Michael Nadler, Eschatology and Manichaeism in the Songs of Bob Dylan 

Sean Walsh

Catharine Mason, Bob Dylan Studies: Language, Literature, and Ethnopoetics 

Nicholas Wagner, Torn Between Jupiter and Apollo: Bob Dylan’s Pre-Christian Phase 

Christopher Mitchell, ‘Everybody Wants You to Be Just Like Them:’ The Menippean Satire of Bob Dylan 

I2. Where Beauty Goes Unrecognized: Reconsidering Bob Dylan in the 1980s

June 4 | 11:30 a.m.
Oklahoma Ballroom

I3. On “Believing the Songs”:  Bob Dylan as a Creative Spiritual Thinker Beyond Traditions

June 4 | 11:30 a.m.
Tulsa North

Erin C. Callahan 

Court Carney 

Harold Lepidus 

Jeff Fallis 

Steven Heine, A Bob Dylan Hourglass: Sayings for Daily Cycles 

Taigen Dan Leighton, Bob Dylan’s Hymns 

Brook Ziporyn, ‘God Did Not Create This Earth’: Grappling with Critiques of Orthodoxy in Masked and Anonymous