Volume currently under contract with Sense.
Series: Critical Literacy Teaching Series: Challenging Authors and Genres
Volume: James Baldwin: Challenging Authors
Editors, A. Scott Henderson and P. L. Thomas, Furman University
The recognition and study of African American (AA) artists and public intellectuals often include Martin Luther King, Jr., and occasionally Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, and Malcolm X. The literary canon also adds Ralph Ellison, Richard White, Langston Hughes, and others such as female writers Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Angelou, and Alice Walker.
Yet, the acknowledgement of AA artists and public intellectuals tends to skew the voices and works of those included toward normalized portrayals that fit well within foundational aspects of the American myths reflected in and perpetuated by traditional schooling. Further, while many AA artists and public intellectuals are distorted by mainstream media, public and political characterizations, and the curriculum, several powerful AA voices are simply omitted, ignored, including James Baldwin.
This edited volume will invite and gather a collection of essays that confront Baldwin’s impressive canon or writing and his role as a public intellectual while also exploring Baldwin as a confrontational writer, expatriate, civil rights agitator, and openly gay individual during a highly repressive era.
Table of Contents [working]
Introduction, P. L. Thomas
“James Baldwin’s ‘The Fire Next Time’ and the Jeremiad Tradition,” James Tackach
“To Jimmy (and Jose), with Love: I Walk Freely among Racism,” P. L. Thomas
“Good Minds Versus Critical Minds: Baldwin’s Radical Pedagogical Vision,” A. Scott Henderson
“Another Country: James Baldwin at ‘Home’ (and) Abroad,” Sion Dayson
“Notes of a Palestinian-Israeli Native Son: Revisiting James Baldwin’s Writings from the Perspective of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict,” Yehuda Sharim
“From a Portrait to a Room: James, Baldwin, and Exploding the Historical Boundaries of American Manhood,” Dwan H. Simmons
“James Baldwin: Artist as Activist and the Baldwin/Kennedy Secret Summit Circa 1963,” Charles Reese
“Baldwin and the Black Theatre,” Susan Watson Turner
[Untitled], Jeffrey Santa Ana
“The Agitating Power of Civil Rights Cool in ‘Going to Meet the Man,’” Beazley Kanost
“Digging Through the Ruins”: Just Above My Head and the Memory of James A. Baldwin, Ernest L. Gibson, III
“James Baldwin’s Gospel of Postcategorical Love,” Pekka Kilpeläinen
“No Zealot Like a Convert: Baldwin’s Narratives of Conversion,” McKinley E. Melton
[Untitled], Tara Betts
“James Baldwin vs. William Buckley and the Soul of America,” Seneca Vaught
“`Fame is the Spur’: James Baldwin’s Portrait of the Artist and the Struggle with Fame,”
Jacqueline Jones Compaore
Conclusion, A. Scott Henderson
Timeline
Call for essay proposals DUE: May 15, 2013
Essays accepted, author confirmations due: May 31, 2013
Initial essay drafts DUE: September 20, 2013
Editor feedback, drafts returned: October 1, 2013
Final/ revised essays DUE: November 15, 2013
Final draft submission to Sense: December 15, 2013
