82-008-L-ANG05-V-S-SE-0512.20191.003

Literature and Other Discourses: -If Beale Street Could Talk- -- Reassessing James Baldwin's Writing on Exile, Race, Class, and Gender

Seminar

Englisch

4/24/2019 - 7/27/2019

Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät

Schmidt Kerstin

25 unlimited

As a unique voice in American letters, James Baldwin is currently experiencing what may be termed a full-fledged renaissance. Although his brilliant and provocative writing had never lost its urgency and edge, the ongoing racism in US American culture, exemplified e.g. in the debate over Black Lives Matter, or the recent Academy Award-winning, respectively -nominated, films -If Beale Street Could Talk- and -I am Not Your Negro- may have catered to a renewed interest in the work of this African-American novelist, dramatist, essayist, and activist who articulated so poignantly salient issues of racial and class-related inequality, who was an early advocate of LGBT rights, who thematized life in exile, and who has been an inspiration of generations of artists, both in the US and abroad.

Works to be discussed in class include (but are not limited to) -Go Tell It on the Mountain- (1953), -Giovanni’s Room- (1956), -The Fire Next Time- (1963), -The Amen Corner- (1954),-If Beale Street Could Talk- (both the 1974 novel and the Academy Award-winning 2018 film version) as well as Raoul Peck’s 2016 documentary -I Am Not Your Negro-.

3/12/2019 -

Closed