Cost and Registration Information
Early Registration Price (by May 19): $240
Regular Price (after May 19): $264
Seminar Description
The time is ripe for both Baldwin and the writers who have taken up his torch. We’ll pair Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain and Notes of a Native Son with Eula Biss’s Notes from No Man’s Land, Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time with the fierce fire of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me. In this way, with these brave and lyric writers, we’ll plumb America’s complicated racial heritage. Eight sessions.
Matt Laufer holds a PhD from Columbia University and has taught literature at Columbia, Barnard College, and various college preparatory schools. He has published articles on Nabokov, Melville, and Woolf.
Materials List
Required:
- James Baldwin. Go Tell it on the Mountain, Vintage International, 978-0345806543
- James Baldwin. Notes of a Native Son, Beacon Press, 978-0807006238
- James Baldwin. The Fire Next Time, Vintage, 978-0679744726
- Eula Bliss. Notes from No-Man’s Land, Graywolf Press, 978-1555975180
- Ta-Nehisi Coates. Between the World and Me, Spiegel and Grau, 978-0812993547
- David Leeming. James Baldwin: A Biography, Arcade Publishing, 978-1628724387
First Readings:
-
Please read the first half of Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) for the first class. Optional: chapters 1-7 in the Leeming biography.
This class is part of the Newberry’s Adult Education Seminars Program. Learn more about our registration procedures.