Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 36

Black Music and the Archive: A Public Conversation with Mark Anthony Neal and Shanna Greene Benjamin

A public conversation with Mark Anthony Neal, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor, Duke University, on his recently published book Black Ephemera: The Crisis and Challenge of the Musical Archive (NYU Press, 2022). Joining Professor Neal for this conversation is Shanna Greene Benjamin, Professor of African American Studies, Wake Forest University. Sponsored by Wake Forest University African American Studies

Nina Katchadourian and James Hannaham: Artists on Writers | Writers on Artists

'For this episode of Artforum's Artists on Writers, Writers on Artists, writer James Hannaham and artist Nina Katchadourian cover many subjects including what it’s like to observe and experience change—whether that’s the changes to a city, or to neighborhood. James talks about infusing fictions with the textures of real life, and Nina addresses what it means to survive the unsurvivable, asking questions about what humans are capable of living beyond, or living with.'

The Climate of Theory: Hurricanes, Slave Skeletons, Tidalectics with Anny-Dominique Curtius

'In 1995, hurricanes Iris, Luis and Marylin blasted the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe with devastating long-term effects. A similar phenomenon happened in 2007 in Réunion in the Indian Ocean, after hurricane Gamède severely impacted the island with record rainfall and flooding. While these hurricanes remain in collective memory among the most damaging ones, and while the trauma that they generated is cyclically reactivated every time island populations grapple with the durable effects of these hurricanes, massive soil erosion has excavated slave burial grounds on popular touristy beaches of Guadeloupe and Réunion. As intangible witnesses of a camouflaged archive, the land and the ocean unsettled an archeology of absence, triggered a resurgence of traumas, and channeled symbolic commemoration practices by grassroots communities. Professor Anny-Dominique Curtius examines how enslaved bodies molded into the soil of the violent space of the plantation rematerialize no longer as the ghosts of history or the furniture of the Code Noir, but as a memorial grammar that needs to be deciphered. Cross-pollinating embodied community engagement, mortuary archeology, creative spiritual art and post/decolonial critical theory, Curtius posits that a tidalectical and anarchival imagination matters to excavate entangled layers of meaning and reconfigure the skeletons of history in a time of climate change.'

Lava Thomas: Homecoming (2022)

'In this film, Lava Thomas provides insight into the overarching themes found in the artworks of Lava Thomas: Homecoming  at the Spelman Museum and discusses the exhibition within the context of American history, family history and a broader cultural narrative. Directed by Nick Drollette.'

Lava Thomas: Homecoming from Spelman Museum on Vimeo.

'It chips away at you': Misty Copeland on the whiteness of ballet

'For years Misty Copeland was told that her skin color, her body and her hair didn't conform to what ballerinas were supposed to look like. In her new memoir, The Wind at My Back: Resilience, Grace, and Other Gifts from My Mentor, Raven Wilkinson, Copeland chronicles the barriers she had to overcome to become a star in the ballet world. And she writes about her mentor, Raven Wilkinson, who, in 1955, became the first Black ballerina to receive a contract with a major ballet company, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.'

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Left of Black S13 · E5 | Commemorating "Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination" with Robin D.G. Kelley

Is the South as conservative as we think? Or has it always been ground zero for radical Black thinking and organizing of civil rights and labor rights movements? In this special episode of Left of Black, host Dr. Mark Anthony Neal sits with long-time friend and colleague, celebrated historian Dr. Robin D.G. Kelley to discuss the nature of the South in these tumultuous times and the 20th anniversary of one of Kelley's most memorable publications, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, published by Beacon Press.

Conversations in Atlantic Theory • Robin Brooks on Class Interruptions: Inequality and Division in African Diasporic Women's Fiction

'Conversations in Atlantic Theory is joined by  Dr. Robin Brooks,  an associate professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pittsburgh with an impressive record of scholarship that examines a range of cultural matters concerning Black communities in the United States and the wider African Diaspora. Primary research and teaching interests for Dr. Brooks include contemporary cultural and literary studies as well as working-class studies, Black feminist theory, postcolonial studies, digital humanities, higher education management, and education policy. Challenging conventional boundaries, her scholarship uncovers overlooked and underexamined ways in which African Diasporic cultural representations participate in antiracist and anti-discriminatory struggles. In this conversation we discuss her book Class Interruptions: Inequality and Division in African Diasporic Women’s Fiction (UNC Press, 2022), which is a book that examines how contemporary writers use literary portrayals of class to critique inequalities and divisions in the U.S. and Caribbean.'

Novel Dialogue | The Best Error You Can Make: Brent Hayes Edwards and Jean-Baptiste Naudy on Claude McKay

'What can a French translator do with a novelist who writes brilliantly about the “confrontation between Englishes?” How can such a confrontation be made legible across the boundaries of language, nation, and history? Renowned scholar and translator Brent Hayes Edwards sits down with publisher and translator Jean-Baptiste Naudy to consider these questions in a wide-ranging discussion about translating the Jamaican American writer Claude McKay. They focus especially on the recent translation into French of McKay’s 1941 Amiable with Big Teeth, which paints a satirical portrait of efforts by 1930s Harlem intelligentsia to organize support for the liberation of fascist-controlled Ethiopia. Brent and Jean-Baptiste consider McKay’s lasting legacy and ongoing revival in the U.S. and France. Translating McKay into French, they note, is a matter of reckoning with France’s own imperial history. That history, along with McKay’s complex understanding of race both in the U.S. and abroad, is illuminated in this conversation about one of the Harlem Renaissance’s most celebrated writers.'

LARB Radio Hour: Darryl Pinckney’s “Come Back in September”

 

'Eric Newman and Kate Wolf speak with the novelist and critic Darryl Pinckney about his new memoir, Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-Seventh Street, Manhattan. The book recounts Pinckney’s relationship with a legend of American letters: the singular stylist Elizabeth Hardwick. Hardwick was Pinckney’s professor in a creative writing class at Barnard in the early 1970s, and they quickly became close friends. She invited him into her home, into her writing process, and into a world of New York literary culture and gossip, which Pinckney doles out here in generous cupfuls. It was through Hardwick that Pinckney met Barbara Epstein, an editor and co-founder of the New York Review of Books, where he began his writing career. His memoir documents a critical time in both his own life and in Hardwick’s, including the dissolution of her marriage to the poet Robert Lowell, and the composition of her masterful novel, Sleepless Nights.'

The Lion King: Tiny Desk Concert

'Actors and musicians on Broadway have a grueling performance schedule: eight shows a week with only Mondays off. Yet the band and cast of The Lion King were ecstatic to spend their one free day traveling from New York to Washington, D.C. to celebrate 25 years of the iconic musical with a performance at NPR's Tiny Desk.'