Seminar James Baldwin Novelist Essayist Public Intellectual Di 10:30-12:00

Few writers and thinkers have been invoked more often in recent rethinkings of race in the US than James Baldwin. This seminar will begin by focusing on the novels and essays that James Baldwin wrote between 1949 and 1962 and will then explore the ways he developed artistically and politically in the decades that followed. For Baldwin, the 1950s were a time of both artistic and political self-definition: With the publication of the essay -Everybody’s Protest Novel” (1949) and his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), Baldwin undertook to situate himself vis-à-vis both African-American literary culture and the world of his own youth. In the course of the 1950s, Baldwin struggled to develop a novelistic agenda that captures and accepts the -beauty, dread, power” of life that he sees the protest novel as rejecting in the name of a political agenda. At the same time, he felt increasingly compelled to -witness” and comment on the political situation in the United States. We will examine Baldwin’s responses to the political developments of the 60s and 70s, trace the development of his novelistic and essayistic techniques, and evaluate his very different agendas for the two genres. We will read at least 3 novels, Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, and Another Country (and probably either Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone or Just Above My Head) as well as a substantial selection of his essays. Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Düsseldorf WiSe 2015/16 Univ.-Prof. Dr. Winnett Susan