Conversations, Engagements and Responses to James Baldwin’s Centennial
DETROIT – Throughout the United States and France, there will be numerous events celebrating the centennial birth year of the renowned writer and activist, James Baldwin. In Detroit, a consortium of institutions, including the Charles H. Wright Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the City of Detroit’s Office of Arts, Cultural Affairs and Entrepreneurship, Wayne State University and the Detroit Writers Guild are hosting a series of events in tandem with these celebrations.
Oct. 13, 15-18, 2024
Sabrina Nelson’s “Frontline Prophet” portrait series of Baldwin inspired the conference, will be on exhibit at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Aug. 2, 2024, through Feb. 28, 2025. This traveling exhibition is curated Ashara Ekundayo and Omo Misha.
Wayne State University professors and members of the Detroit Writers’ Guild, Melba Joyce Boyd and M.L. Leibler, are co-directors of the activities. Apart from the screening of "I Am Not Your Negro" at the Detroit Film Theatre at Detroit Institute of Arts on Sunday, 4:30 p.m., Oct. 13 and “Readings for Baldwin” on Tuesday, 7:30 p.m., on Oct. 15 at the Aretha Jazz Café in the Detroit Music Hall, Conversations, Engagements and Responses to James Baldwin’s Centennial will take place on the Wayne State University campus. See schedule below for details. All events are free and open to the public.
Keynote speakers include Detroit artist, Sabrina Nelson, who will discuss her creative process and engagement with Baldwin as a cultural icon. Award-winning writer, Quincy Troupe, who knew and conducted the last interview with Baldwin before his passing; University of Michigan Professor Magdalena Zarboroska, noted Baldwin scholar and author of three books about Baldwin will provide a literary critique and historical insight; and Howard University Professor, New York City native and award-winning writer, Tony Media, will discuss Baldwin’s biographical and creative origins. Themes for the panel presentations will focus on Baldwin’s literary works and legacy, as well as his activist activities in the Civil Rights Movement, his international politics and his advocacy for gender rights.
In addition, readings of Baldwin’s literature by writers and scholars will enhance the tone and purpose of the centennial celebration. Poetry and prose responses to and in honor of Baldwin will illustrate Baldwin’s living legacy in American literature. A screening of “The Price of the Ticket” by film director, Karen Thorsen, will occur on campus on Oct. 16 at 1 p.m. in Bernath Auditorium in the Adamany Undergraduate Library. University of Michigan professor and Baldwin biographer, Professor Magdelina Zabarowska, will speak after the screening. A panel comprised of nationally acclaimed playwright and poet, Bill Harris; Michigan Poet Laureate, Nandi Comer; and WSU Professor Todd Duncan will follow. Quincy Troupe will speak at the Partrich Auditorium in the WSU Law School at 6:30 p.m. and a reception sponsored by the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights will follow.
On Oct. 17 at 1 p.m. in Bernath Auditorium, “Baldwin’s Literary Activism” will feature
Department of African American Studies Professors: Navid Farnia, Charise Burden-Stelly and Anwar Uhuru; and Parisian scholar, Alia Benabdellah. At 3:30 p.m., “Six Degrees of James Baldwin” in the Bernath Auditorium will feature Howard University Professor Tony Medina. At 5 p.m., “More to Think about Baldwin,” engaging conference participants and the audience will be moderated by Boyd and Liebler. And at 6:30 p.m. a Book Party featuring V. Efua Prince and Tony Medina at the Scarab Club, 217 Farnsworth, sponsored by the WSU Press.
A film screening event of “I Am Not Your Negro” and “The Price of the Ticket” for WSU students will occur in Humanities Common at 1 p.m. in the Adamany Library with conversations with director, Karen Thorsen.
Cosponsors
Detroit Institute of Arts, The Kresge Foundation, Wayne State University Departments of African American Studies and English; Center for Women and Gender Studies, Humanities Commons, Center for Humanities, Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights in the WSU Law School.
Schedule
Co-directors: Melba Joyce Boyd and M. L. Liebler
Oct. 13, 2024, 4:30 p.m.
- "I Am Not Your Negro," screening and featuring Raoul Peck, director
- Conversations with Lisa Alexander and Juanita Anderson
Location: Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit Film Theatre
Sponsored by the City of Detroit, Office of Arts, Cultural Affairs and Entrepreneurship.
Oct. 15, 2024, 7:30 p.m.
“Reading for James Baldwin at the Aretha Jazz Café”
- Guest speakers: Sabrina Nelson, Quincy Troupe, Melba Joyce Boyd, Bill Harris, M.L. Liebler, Tony Medina, V. Efua Prince, Karen Thorsen and others
- Featuring musicians: Marion Hayden, Tariq Gardner and Ian Finkelstein.
Location: The Aretha Jazz Café, Detroit Music Hall
Hosted by the Detroit Writers Guild.
Oct. 16, 2024, 1 p.m.
"The Price of the Ticket"
Film screening by Karen Thorsen, director. Discussion with the director following the screening.
Location: Bernath Auditorium, Adamany Library, WSU campus
Oct. 16, 2024, 3:30 p.m.
"Writing Baldwin"
- Keynote speaker: Magdalena Zaborowska, University of Michigan
- Panelists: “Talking about Baldwin: Creative and Intellectual Responses to Baldwin’s Voice:” Nandi Comer, Bill Harris and Laval “Todd” Duncan
Location: Bernath Auditorium, Adamany Library, WSU campus
Oct. 16, 2024: 6:30 p.m.
“The Legacy of James Baldwin”
- Keynote speaker: Quincy Troupe
- Welcome: Peter Hammer, Director, Keith Center for Civil Rightsh
- Reception following program
Location: WSU Law School, Patrich Auditorium
Oct. 17, 2024: 1 p.m.
Baldwin’s LiteraryActivism”
- Introductions: Ollie Johnson, III, chair, Department of African American Studies
- Panel: Professors Navid Farnia, Charise Burden-Stelly, Anwar Uhuru, Department of African American
Studies and Parisian scholar, Alia Benabdellah - Panel chair: David Goldberg
Location: Bernath Auditorium, Adamany Library, WSU campus
Oct. 17, 2024: 3:30 p.m.
"Six Degrees of James Baldwin"
- Keynote speaker: Tony Medina, Howard University
Location: Bernath Auditorium, Adamany Library, WSU campus
Oct. 17, 2024: 5 p.m.
"More to Think about Baldwin: Engaging Participants and Audience"
- Moderators: Melba Boyd and Michael Liebler
Location: Bernath Auditorium, Adamany Library, WSU campus
Oct. 17, 2024, 6:30 p.m.
Book Party featuring V. Efua Prince and Tony Medina
Location: Scarab Club, 217 Farnsworth
Oct. 18, 2024, 1 p.m.
- “Visualizing Baldwin’s Words”
- Screenings: "I Am Not Your Negro," and "The Price of the Ticket"
- Conversation with director, Karen Thorsen
Location: Humanities Common, Adamany Library
Bios
Project directors
Melba Joyce Boyd
The 2023 Kresge Eminent Artist, is a native Detroiter, distinguished university professor in the Department of African American Studies at Wayne State University in Detroit and adjunct professor in Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor. She was elected to the Academy of Scholars in 2021 and received the Spirit of Detroit Award on Martin Luther King Day in 2023. An award-winning author of nine books of poetry, three documentary films, two biographies, editor of two poetry anthologies and over 100 essays, including “James Baldwin and the Black Arts Movement,” published in James Baldwin in Context, Quentin Miller, ed. Cambridge, UK: University of Cambridge Press, 2020. She has given lectures and poetry readings throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and China.
Her poetry, essays and scholarship about African American literature and film have likewise appeared in anthologies, academic journals, cultural periodicals and newspapers locally and globally. Her poetry has been anthologized and translated into German, Italian and French, but possibly her most significant work is her poem, “This Museum Was Once a Dream,” engraved in bronze and displayed on the dedication wall of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. Lines from her poetry appear in the sculpture, “Transcending: Michigan’s Tribute to Labor,” in Detroit’s Hart Plaza and her poem, “Maple Red” appears adjacent to the painting by Ed Clark in the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Her collection of poetry, "Death Dance of a Butterfly," received the 2013 Library of Michigan Notable Book Award for Poetry. In 2010, "Roses and Revolutions: The Selected Writings of Dudley Randall" received the Independent Publishers Award, the Library of Michigan Notable Book Award for Poetry and it was a Finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Poetry and the ForeWord Award for Poetry. "Wrestling with the Muse: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press" received the 2004 Honor for Nonfiction from The Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She received the Sojourner Truth Award for Community Service Award. Boyd’s critically acclaimed and widely reviewed, "Discarded Legacy: Politics and Poetics in the Life of Frances E. W. Harper, 1825-1911," (1994) was the first comprehensive study of this 19th-century, Black woman poet, fiction writer and essayist, who braved the Abolitionist and Woman’s Rights Movements. Her first book of poetry, "Cat Eyes and Dead Wood (1978)" received a publication award from the National Endowment of the Arts. Boyd is the editor of the African American Series at Wayne State University Press and was the assistant editor at Dudley Randall’s Broadside Press, 1972-76; she now serves as the executor of Randall’s literary estate.
Melba Joyce Boyd was a senior Fulbright scholar at the University of Bremen and a visiting professor at Colgate College and Fudan University in Shanghai, China. She has held academic positions at the University of Iowa, Ohio State University and was the director of African American Studies at the University of Michigan—Flint. She was the chair of African American Studies at Wayne State for 16 years. She has M.A. and B.A. degrees in English from Western Michigan University and a Doctor of Arts in English from the University of Michigan.
M.L. Liebler
An internationally known & widely published Detroit poet, university professor, literary arts activist and arts organizer. He was named the 2017-2018 Murray E. Jackson Scholar in the Arts Award at Wayne State University. Liebler is the author of 15 books and chapbooks including the Award-winning "Wide Awake in Someone Else's Dream" (Wayne State University Press, 2008) featuring poems written in and about Russia, Israel, Germany, Alaska and Detroit. "Wide Awake" won The Paterson Poetry Prize for Literary Excellence and The American Indie Book Award for 2009. In 2005, he was named St. Clair Shores (his hometown) first Poet Laureate. Liebler has read and performed his work in Afghanistan, Israel, Palestine, Russia, China, France, UK, Macao, Italy, Germany, Spain, Finland and most of the 50 States. M.L. Liebler has taught English, Creative Writing, American Studies, Labor Studies and World Literature at Wayne State University in Detroit since 1980 and he is the founding director of both The National Writer's Voice Project in Detroit and the Springfed Arts: Metro Detroit Writers Literary Arts Organization.
Liebler was selected as “Best Detroit Poet” by "The Detroit Free Press" and "Detroit Metro Times." In 2010, he received The Barnes & Noble Poets & Writers Award with Maxine Hong Kingston and Junot Diaz. In 2011, his groundbreaking anthology "Working Words: Punching the Clock & Kicking Out the James" (Coffee House Press) received a 2011 Library of Michigan Notable Book Award. In 2017, Liebler received a total of four Library of Michigan Notable Book Awards for both his new collection of poems entitled "I Want to Be Once" (Wayne State University Press/Made in Michigan Series); for "Heaven Was Detroit: An Anthology of Detroit Music Essays from Jazz to Hip-Hop," editor (The Wayne State University Press, Painted Turtle Series); and for Bob Seger's House: An Anthology of Michigan Short Stories (Co-Editor with Mike Delp). Both "Heaven Was Detroit" and Bob Seger's "House" were finalists for the prestigious Forward Book Awards. 2020 saw the release of "RESPECT: Poets on Detroit Music" edited by M. L. Liebler and Jim Daniels (Michigan State University Press, 2020). "RESPECT" received both a 2021 Tillie Olsen Award and a 2021 Library of Michigan Notable Book Award. In September 2020, M. L. was awarded the Michigan Humanities Champion of the Year. Liebler received a Wayne State University Distinguished Scholar Award for 2024-2026 and he currently directs The WSU Humanities Commons and The Detroit Writers' Guild.
Presenters
Lisa Doris Alexander
Lisa Doris Alexander is a full professor in the Department of African American Studies at Wayne State University. She earned her doctorate in American Culture Studies from Bowling Green State University, her masters degree in Afro-American studies from the University of California, Los Angeles and her bachelor's degree in political science from Grinnell College. She has written three books: When Baseball Isn’t White, Straight and Male: The Media and Difference in The National Pastime which won the Society of American Baseball Research’s Negro League’s Committee Robert Peterson Recognition Award in 2013; Expanding the Black Film Canon: Race and Genre Across Six Decades and Homicide: Life on the Street which is part of Wayne State University Press’ TV Milestone Series. She co-edited the book "The Circus is in Town: Sport, Celebrity and Spectacle" with Joel Nathan Rosen. She refuses to choose between Star Trek and Star Wars and is a fan of the Chicago White Sox, the Chicago Sky and Chicago Bulls.
Juanita Anderson
Juanita is the area head and professor (teaching) of media arts and studies in the Department of Communication at Wayne State University. She is a filmmaker, producer and photographer who was born and raised in Detroit. Her body of work spans more than four decades.
Her 2023 film, “Sydney G. James: How We See Us,” is included in the “American Masters” short film series, “In The Making.” Her photography is in the collections of Fayetteville State University, Southern Methodist University and the Mott-Warsh Collection. A seven-time Emmy winner for her work in public media, she was the executive producer of the 1988 Academy Award-nominated feature film, “Who Killed Vincent Chin?,” which was inducted into the National Film Registry in 2021.
Bill Harris
Harris, an emeritus professor of English at Wayne State University, is a poet, playwright, prose writer and arts critic. "I Got to Keep Moving" a book of related short stories and SIGHT/SOUND a hand-printed collaboration with photographer Carla Anderson are his latest publications. "Birth of a Notion," or "The Half Ain’t Never Been Told" and "Booker T & Them" are books of cultural critiques of American history from an African American perspective. "Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil and Stories About the Old Days" are but two of his plays that have received over 100 productions around the country. Denzel Washington, S. Epatha Merkerson and Abbey Lincoln starred in his stage works. His books of poems are "Yardbird Suite: Side One," which won the Naomi Madgett Long Poetry Award in 1997 and "The Ringmaster’s Array." He was named the 2011 Kresge Eminent Artist for his contributions to the Detroit Literary scene.
Barry Jenkins
Barry, an Academy Award winner, is the writer and director of "Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk." "Moonlight" was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won three (Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor) and "If Beale Street Could Talk" was nominated for three Academy Awards including Best Adapted Screenplay. Barry is currently directing "Mufasa: The Lion King," a prequel of the classic "The Lion King for Disney." Mufasa will be released in 2024.
Quincy Troupe
Quincy is the award-winning author of 21 books, including 12 volumes of poetry and three children’s books. Co-author of the definitive autobiography of Miles Davis, "Miles: The Autobiography," Troupe also conducted the last interview with James Baldwin, reprinted as "James Baldwin: The Last Interview" (Melville House, New York 2014). His writings have been translated into over 30 languages. Among his many distinguished achievements are the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement, the Milt Kessler Poetry Award, three American Book Awards, the 2014 Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award, a 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award from Furious Flower and the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History Award, January 25, 2018, in Detroit Michigan. His newest collection of poetry is entitled "Duende Poems, 1966 – Now" (Seven Stories Press, New York 2022).
Navid Farnia
Navid is an assistant professor in the Department of African American Studies at Wayne State University. His research broadly explores the relationship between racial oppression in the United States and U.S. imperialism, with a special focus on revolutionary movements and counterrevolutionary responses. His book manuscript, "National Liberation in an Imperialist World: Race, Counterrevolution and the United States," traces the U.S. national security state’s evolution by examining how U.S. officials responded to national liberation movements at home and abroad from the 1950s to 1980. Dr. Farnia was also on the steering committee for the International People’s Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism, which investigated the effects of sanctions, blockades and economic coercive measures imposed by the U.S. on Global South countries.
Charisse Burden-Stelly
Charisee is an associate professor of African American Studies at Wayne State University and a 2023-2024 Visiting Scholar at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. She is the author of "Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States" and the co-author, with Gerald Horne, of "W.E.B. Du Bois: A Life in American History." She is also the co-editor of two edited collections: "Organize, Fight, Win: Black Communist Women’s Political Writings" with Jodi Dean and "Reproducing Domination: On the Caribbean Postcolonial State" with Percy C. Hintzen and Aaron Kamugisha. She is currently working on two book projects, "Mutual Comradeship: The Ethical Practice of Radical Blackness," with the University of California Press and "Black Power Antecedents in the McCarthyist Conjuncture."
Robert Laidler
Robert is an assistant professor at Wayne State University, a graduate of the University of Michigan's Helen Zell Writing Program and the author of a poetic libretto, The Fallen Petals of Nameless Flowers, which premiered at Chamber Music Detroit in 2022. Most recently he was a finalist for The 2023 National Poetry Series and The Adrift Chapbook Contest. His poems can be found in Missouri Review, Ilanot, Driftwood, Poet Lore, Oxford and elsewhere.
Tony Medina
Tony was born in the South Bronx and raised in the Throgs Neck Housing Projects. A United States Army veteran, he holds a master’s and Ph.D. from Binghamton University, SUNY and is Howard University’s first professor of creative writing. Medina is a multi-genre author/editor of 25 award-winning books for adults and young people. His work appears in more than 160 anthologies and journals, including “I’ve Got the Covid Blues” and “Seven Steps to Heaven Haiku,” both featured in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day. Medina’s poetry, fiction and essays also appear in Sheree Renée Thomas’ Dark Matter, Ishmael Reed’s "Hollywood Unchained," Kevin Young’s Library of America anthology, "African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song," Kwame Alexander’s "This Is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets," and as an advisory editor for Nikki Giovanni’s "Hip Hop Speaks to Children." His novelette "Porto Rock Pegasus, published by Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora," was nominated for a Pushcart Prize; “Digging: A Conversation with Amiri Baraka” was published in "The Black Scholar;" and the audiobook of his children’s biography in verse, "I and I, Bob Marley," narrated by actor Jaime Lincoln Smith and produced by Live Oak Media, won the 2022 Audie Award.
His poems “Charleena Lyles,” “Well, You Needn’t” and “I Am the Churro Lady” have been published in the two-volume anthology series, "The Power of the Feminine I: Poems from the Feminine Perspective" (ThreshPress Midwest, 2024), edited by Christal Ann Rice Cooper and Donna Biffar. Medina has also been featured on NBC’s philanthropic reality show, "Give, PBS’ White House Chronicle," CBS’ "Great Day Washington," SiriusXM’s "Kids Place Live," Medgar Evers College’s "Writers on Writing," Forbes magazine and has worked extensively with the non-profit literary organizations Say It Loud, Behind the Book and Meet the Writers. Among Medina’s many titles are the banned book Love to Langston; "Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam; In Defense of Mumia; An Onion of Wars;" the Black Lives Matter anthology, "Resisting Arrest: Poems to Stretch the Sky; Death, With Occasional Smiling" (poetry); "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy" (children’s), "I Am Alfonso Jones" (graphic novel), "Che Che Colé" (fiction); the forthcoming "Because the Sky: A Gaza Suite" (Jacar Press); two Third World Press titles: "Serious Trouble" (poetry) and "Everywhere Drums: Poets from the Black Arts to Black Lives Matter" (coedited with Mudiwa Pettus); as well as a hybrid collection of poetry and fiction, "Rock the Bells: For Hip Hop @ 50" (tome).
Sabrina Nelson
Sabrina has been a professional interdisciplinary artist for over 37 years, exhibiting throughout the Midwest and in Florida, New York, Louisiana, California and Paris, France. She works in a variety of media and styles – from painting, drawing and sculpture, to art installations, performances and more. Nelson is also an educator, lecturer and ‘artivist’—using her art as a medium for activism. She has been with the College for Creative Studies, College of Art & Design in Arts Administration for 29 years and with the Detroit Institute of Arts education department for 28 years.
She has taught African American Art History at CCS and Oakland University, served on the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp faculty and as guest curator for the Carr Center and the Detroit Music Hall Performing Arts Center. She earned her BFA in Fine Arts from CCS in 1991. She is a Kresge Arts Fellow for 2021-2022. Her work was featured on PBS in 2020 & 2022. Nelson is the recipient of the Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award for Art and Activism, awarded by Women's Caucus For Art, 2022.
Raoul Peck
Raoul is a director, screenwriter and producer. Born in Haiti and raised in the Congo, U.S., France and Germany, Peck earned an economic engineering master’s degree at the University of Berlin and then studied film at the Academy of Cinema and Television in Berlin (DFFB). In 1995, he created the Foundation Forum Eldorado, which focuses on cultural development in Haiti. He served as Haiti’s Minister of Culture from 1996 to 1997, after two years as a professor for screenwriting and directing at NYU Tish School of the Arts graduate program. In 2010 he was appointed chairman of La Fémis in Paris, the prestigious French national film school. In 2001, the Human Rights Watch Organization awarded him with the Irene Diamond Lifetime Achievement Award.
Peck established Velvet Film in 1989, which is now operating in the U.S., France and Haiti and through which he has produced or co-produced all of his films. He served as jury member at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, as well as jury member at the Berlinale in 2002, as well as Sundance and Tribeca. He is one of the most significant and prolific filmmakers of our time, richly rewarded for his historical, political and artistic work. His complex body of work includes such films as "The Man by the Shore" (Competition, Cannes 1993); "Lumumba" (Director’s Fortnight, Cannes 2000, HBO); He produced and directed Sometimes in April for HBO on the genocide in Rwanda (Competition, Berlinale 2005); Moloch Tropical (Toronto and Berlin) and The Young Karl Marx (Berlinale 2017). His documentary films include: "Lumumba, Death of a Prophet; Fatal Assistance" (Berlinale and Hot Docs 2013). His latest documentary film, "I Am Not Your Negro" was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 89th Academy Awards and has won the Audience Award at both the Toronto and Berlin International Film Festivals, LA film critics best documentary award, the Best Documentary at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) (U.K.) and the French national film award the César, among many others.
Valerie Efua Prince
Valerie was awarded a 2023-2024 Humanities Center Faculty Fellow to complete her manuscript titled, "Laundry: How dirt, water and cleaning clothes became the real work of America," which explores laundry as metonymy, to understand critical aspects of African American women’s historical relationship to home, family, work and industry. The central questions guiding her research seek to unpack the dynamics of black family life. Prince’s writing is rooted in the humanities and encompasses both creative and scholarly arenas. Her work often takes an interdisciplinary form as history, poetry, drama and performance, to transform the history of black women into political art.
Her current work represents a refinement of themes she has been considering for more than 20 years, evident in both "Burnin’ Down the House: Home in African American Literature" (2005), which considers the way that five canonical texts reflect the African American quest for home and "Daughter’s Exchange" (2018), a hybrid text that utilizes the vernacular to represent the African American woman’s encounter with the intellectual marketplace.
Prince received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in English Language and Literature after completing a doctoral thesis titled "Finding a Place of My Own: Home and the Paradox of Blues Expressiveness." She is the author of "Crazy As Hell: The Best Little Guide to Black History" (2024), co-authored with Bro Yao, published by W. W. Norton in partnership with Freedom Reads and Kin: Practically True Stories (2024). Prince is a professor of African American Studies at Wayne State University and has served as a director of Black studies at Allegheny College, the Avalon professor of Humanities at Hampton University, a visiting scholar at the University of Virginia’s Carter G. Woodson Institute and a fellow at Harvard University’s W. E. B. Du Bois Center.
Anwar Uhuru
An assistant professor of African American Studies and Philosophy at Wayne State University. Their work is primarily concerned with social power regarding gender, class, sexuality and ableism and how it intersects with state-based violence due to social hierarchy. Their research interests include Black Existentialism, Africana Philosophy, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Queer of Color Critique, Black Intellectual Thought, Black Cultural Production and Aesthetics. They have publications in the Journal of Hip Hop Studies, The Journal of Philosophy and Global Affairs, APA Studies, Journal of World Philosophy, Philosophy Compass and Radical Philosophy Review. Their forthcoming book, "The Insurrectionist Case for Reparations: Race, Value and Ethics," will be published through SUNY Press.
Magdalena J. Zaborowska
A full professor in the Departments of American Culture and Afro-American and African Studies, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. She was previously at the University of Oregon, Furman University, Tulane University, Aarhus University in Denmark; was a distinguished visiting professor at the University of Italy in Cagliari (Sardinia) and Université Paul-Valéry in Montpellier, France. She is the author of "Me and My House: James Baldwin’s Last Decade in France (Duke UP, 2018);" the MLA award-winning: "James Baldwin’s Turkish Decade: Erotics of Exile" (Duke UP 2009); and "How We Found America: Reading Gender through East European Immigrant Narratives" (University of North Carolina Press, 1995). Her forthcoming work is James Baldwin: The Life Album (Yale UP, Black Lives, 2025).
She is the editor and co-editor of "Other Americans, Other Americas: The Politics and Poetics of Multiculturalism" (Aarhus University Press, 1998); "The Puritan Origins of American Sex: Religion, Sexuality and National Identity in American Literature" (Routledge, 2001); and "Over the Wall/After the Fall: Post-Communist Cultures in the East-West Gaze" (Indiana University Press, 2004). Zaborowska also manages the open-access digital writer’s house museum collection at the University of Michigan and an online exhibit devoted to Baldwin’s house in France at the National Museum of African American History and Culture/Smithsonian in Washington D.C.
Her current work is a monograph in progress, "Memory Wars: Museums, Race and the New Borderlands," explores interactive exhibitions and anti-racist and anti-nationalist storytelling strategies in the United States and post-Cold War Eastern Europe.
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