James Baldwin Archives - Public Seminar

Democracy

How Democracies Die, Fast and Slow

“The troubling truth is that democracy can be destroyed in multiple ways, in different tempos”

April 10, 2023 • by John Keane

Things are serious: the “great democratic revolution“ of modern times, as Tocqueville once called it, appears to be spluttering to a halt....

The Arts

Making Experiences Our Own: A Review of The Amen Corner, 2021

For years, Ijeoma N. Njaka was afraid of failing to understand James Baldwin. Then she went to see his play

October 5, 2022 • by Ijeoma N. Njaka

It is by no means guaranteed that a potential audience member will automatically make a connection between their life experiences, interests, knowledge, emotions, or memories with a piece of art. Interpretive or educational materials, however, can help a viewer create a personally meaningful connection with the art itself....

Making Experiences Our Own: A Review of <em>The Amen Corner</em>, 2021

Politics

Nonviolence, Black Power, and “the Citizens of Pompeii”: James Baldwin’s 1968

The radicalization of an unparalleled figure in American literature and African American cultural politics

October 4, 2022 • by Ed Pavlić

On the third Sunday after the march, September 15, 1963, six Black children were killed in three separate incidents—one of which was the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church—in Birmingham. That day marked the end of Baldwin’s brief career as a literary celebrity and the beginning of his radicalization, ...

Nonviolence, Black Power, and “the Citizens of Pompeii”: James Baldwin’s 1968

Literature

Introducing the Latest Issue of James Baldwin Review

Honoring Baldwin’s legacy in a new volume of academic research, criticism, and personal essays

October 3, 2022 • by Justin A. Joyce

As we continue to bring together a mixture of scholarship, reviews, and reflections—from a variety of voices—it is our humble aim to continue to grow our readership and expand the legacy and impact of our namesake author’s moving works and searing insights. ...

Introducing the Latest Issue of <em>James Baldwin Review</em>

Activism

When It Comes to Racial Justice, Why Is It Wrong to Demand the “Impossible”?

Because when white comfort matters most, Black lives are not a priority

November 3, 2020 • by Kristopher Burrell

On a recent episode of The Open Mind, Alexander Heffner asked his guest, activist minister and scholar Nyle Fort, about the connections between the Covid-19 pandemic and the reemergence of social justice protests across America. Referencing Arundhati Roy’s recent essay “The Pandemic is a Portal,” Fort meditated on the potential ...

When It Comes to Racial Justice, Why Is It Wrong to Demand the “Impossible”?

Literature

James Baldwin and the Fire This Time

Good trouble and the courage to hope

September 9, 2020 • by Justin A. Joyce and Dwight A. McBride

History, despite its wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, but if faced With courage, need not be lived again. Maya Angelou, “On the Pulse of Morning” (1993) As a guide, as a seer, as a prophet – James Baldwin is a writer we need. As Baldwin said about Beauford Delaney, the Black painter who rose to prominence in the ...

Activism

The Anti-Racist Uprising in Brooklyn

A report from the streets

June 3, 2020 • by Natasha Lennard

Since March, sirens have become a consistent soundtrack where I live in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights. For weeks, this was the sound of ambulances, ushering thousands to nearby hospitals from the predominantly African American area, hard hit by the pandemic. But in recent days, the sirens have carried a different meaning. Night ...

Feature

The Dilemma of Black Citizenship

Perpetual Partiality and Patriotism

August 23, 2019 • by Kristopher Burrell

"I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”James Baldwin, Notes from a Native Son The concepts of universal equality and suffrage have historically provided the necessary openings for those who are not rich or white ...

Race

The Outcast State

Shakespeare’s Unlikely Connection to Black Subjectivity

June 18, 2019 • by Seven Richmond

Now that race is the hottest topic of discussion, Othello is everywhere, positioned as the Shakespeare on race. This past semester, while we were reading the play, there were no fewer than four different Othello adaptations nearby: Bill Rauch’s production at the American Reparatory Theater, Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol’s Othello in the Seraglio, Keith Hamilton Cobb’s American Moor, and a ...

Exiles on 12th Street

The Fire This Time

Exiles on 12th Street, Episode Two

April 3, 2019 • by Claire Potter

Violence against African American people creates pain and outrage, but policy makers offer us few solutions. In this episode, we ask: how can the fight for racial justice be accelerated, even as racism remains as persistent today as it was before the modern Civil Rights movement? In the spirit of ...

Education

On James Baldwin and The New School

What It Means to be a Progressive University

December 28, 2017 • by Julia Foulkes

And it is the local experts who field questions about Baldwin. The most recent request was from the university’s marketing and communications department to confirm that he had, in fact, been a student. The Baldwin estate had agreed that the university could quote him on its website but the estate ...

Education

Fame, Truth, and Justice

A Review of Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro

May 17, 2017 • by Simone Lewis

“…The general reaction to famous people who hold difficult opinions is that they can’t really mean it. It’s considered, generally, to be merely an astute way of attracting public attention, a way of making oneself interesting...”- James Baldwin, No Name in The Street James Baldwin was more than a writer and ...