James Baldwin: Literature and the Long Civil Rights Movement
ENGL 4013-002
James Zeigler, Department of English
This course will examine the writing, activism, courage, and enduring relevance of James Baldwin. He was the most renowned and influential literary author involved with the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s and 1960s. Renewed popular and critical attention to his work in recent years has addressed the election of President Barack Obama, resurgent anti-black racism in U.S. public culture, and the efforts of Black Lives Matter to pursue the unfinished aspirations of the Civil Rights Movement.
Public Lecture Series
The Department of English presents a public lecture series in conjunction with the Presidential Dream Course. Presentations are free and open to the public. For information or accommodation to events on the basis of disability, contact James Zeigler, jzeigler@ou.edu.
"Baldwin's Boys"
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
6:00pm - 7:30pm
Mary Eddy and Fred Jones Auditorium
Fred Jones Museum of Art
View Lecture Flyer [PDF]
Michele Elam
Olivier Nomellini Family Professor of English and African American Studies & Director,
Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Modern Thought & Literature
Stanford University
Professor Michele Elam is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin and the author of The Souls of Mixed Folk: Race, Politics, and Aesthetics in the New Millennium and Race, Work and Desire in American Literature, 1860-1930. Her academic articles have appeared in African American Review, American Literature, Theatre Journal, Genre, and other journals and anthologies. CNN, Huffington Post, and Boston Review have published her op-eds. She has won multiple prizes for her teaching at Stanford University, and she serves as a Scholar/ Advisor for The Baldwin Project. Her talk, “Baldwin’s Boys,” will focus on the ways that James Baldwin’s works reimagine kinship and family.
Gay, but not Sissy: The Out/ed Professional Athlete and Racialized Sports in the Era of Gay Affirmation
Thursday, March 9, 2017
6:00pm - 7:20pm
Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation Auditorium
Gaylord College of Journalism
View Lecture Flyer [PDF]
Marlon Ross
Professor of English, University of Virginia
Professor Marlon B. Ross is the author of the books Manning the Race: Reforming Black Men in the Jim Crow Era and The Contours of Masculine Desire: Romanticism and the Rise of Women’s Poetry. Among his many articles, “White Fantasies of Sexual Desire” in James Baldwin Now, “Beyond the Closet as Raceless Paradigm” in Black Queer Studies, and “Some Glances at the Black Fag” in The Black Studies Reader are landmark contributions to scholarship on the intersections of race and sexuality. His visit to OU will include a conference with students on his essay “Baldwin’s Sissy Heroics” from African American Review (winter 2013). Open to the public, his lecture, “Gay, but Not Sissy,” is part of a book he is currently writing entitled Sissy Insurgencies. The recipient of multiple teaching awards, Professor Ross is also a Contributing Editor to The James Baldwin Review and an Associate Editor for Callaloo, the leading journal for the study and publication of the literature, art, and culture of the African diaspora.
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
6:00pm - 7:30pm
Mary Eddy and Fred Jones Auditorium
Fred Jones Museum of Art
View Lecture Flyer [PDF]
Frank X Walker
Professor of English and African American & Africana Studies, University of Kentucky
Professor Frank X Walker is the author of seven books of poetry: About Flight (2015), Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers (2011), Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride (2010), When Winter Come: The Ascension of York (2008), Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York (2004), and Affrilachia (2000). Co-founder of the Affrilachian Poets and originator of the term “Affrilachia,” he was the Poet Laureate of Kentucky in 2013-2014. “Ambiguity over the Confederate Flag” appears in Turn Me Loose, which students in the Dream Course are reading with Blues for Mister Charlie – the play James Baldwin dedicated to the memory of Medgar Evers. This event is free and open to the public.
