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Instructors: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Oliver Scheiding
Event type:
Seminar
Displayed in timetable as:
05.866.522
Language of instruction:
Englisch
Min. | Max. participants:
- | 30
Registration group: AS 522
Priority scheme: Senatsrichtlinie
Requirements / organisational issues:
Requirements: active participation (oral report) and term paper.
Contents:
James Baldwin (1924-1987) is widely considered to be the most important African American author of his time, particularly during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Although a prolific writer of novels, short stories, essays, and plays, his work has fallen into oblivion over the years. Baldwin is probably one of the most quoted, but least read authors among African American writers. Currently, the revived popular interest in his life and work coincides with the Black Lives Matter movement and his being acknowledged by a younger generation of African American writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates as well as a recent film based on an unpublished manuscript by Baldwin. This graduate seminar will focus on the artistic and intellectual complexity of his work (novels, short stories, essays, plays) that resists easy categorization. In doing so, we will examine the development of black intellectual thought in the twentieth century and review how each generation of Baldwin critics defined his work for its own purposes.
Recommended reading list:
Please purchase the following paperback editions (Vintage International)
Go Tell it On the Mountain
Another Country
The Fire Next Time
Notes of a Native Son
Baldwin’s short stories, plays, and related documents are available on ILIAS (electronic Reader)
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