“James Baldwin for Our Times: A Centennial Celebration” honors the life and legacy of influential writer, critic, and social activist, James Baldwin. The multi-day celebration, which is part of the College's annual Cooper Series, will reflect on Baldwin’s relevance to the contemporary moment, asking, “How does the inimitable Black writer James Baldwin speak to us still?”

Associate Professor of English Literature Anthony S. Foy and Associate Professor of Sociology Nina Johnson coordinated the centennial celebration.

Baldwin (1924–1987) is renowned for his essays such as “Notes of a Native Son,” “Nobody Knows My Name,” and “The Fire Next Time”; novels including Giovanni’s Room, Another Country, and If Beale Street Could Talk; plays The Amen Corner and Blues for Mr. Charlie; and memoir No Name in the Street, all of which bear witness to the tumult of America during the Civil Rights Movement, challenging the myths of race, gender, and sexuality that made such struggle necessary.

With the incisive perspective of a queer Black writer who resisted labels, Baldwin offered a critique of American society that often involved the complex interaction of history and identity, providing insights that continue to resonate today.

As Baldwin wrote in 1967, “I would like us to do something unprecedented: to create ourselves without finding it necessary to create an enemy.” 

“We will have a number of scholars, thinkers, and writers come together to talk about James Baldwin's impact on their own work, and how their work speaks back to his own truth telling,” Johnson tells KYW Newsradio.

Foy teaches a course devoted to the writer, James Baldwin’s Civil Rights, which focuses on the prolific period from the late 1950s to the early 1970s when Baldwin arose as a spokesperson, celebrity, and artist of the Civil Rights Movement. Foy’s students engage with Baldwin through his fiction, essays, drama, and memoir, paying particular attention to the ethics and aesthetics of Blackness, race, gender, sexuality, and history.

The celebration will begin with a film screening facilitated by Assistant Professor of Theater Isaiah Wooden on Wednesday, Oct. 30 at 7 p.m. Dick Fontaine and Pat Hartley's I Heard It Through the Grapevine (1982) will be screened, a film that follows Baldwin as he revisits important sites and moments in Civil Rights history. A discussion will follow the film, led by Wooden. A trailer of the film can be watched here.

Author Eddie S. Glaude Jr., the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor at Princeton University, will present “James Baldwin for Our Times,” a public lecture on Friday, Nov. 1 at 7 p.m. Glaude’s recent works include Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own and We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For.

"James Baldwin for Our Times: Conversations" will take place on Saturday, Nov. 2, hosting a day of discussions with leading scholars from 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Jamal Batts, assistant professor of Black Studies, will moderate Queer Lives Now! with Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman (Brown University) and Dagmawi Woubshet (University of Pennsylvania). Salamishah Tillet (Rutgers University) and Maurice O. Wallace (Rutgers University) will present Social Justice Now!, moderated by Wooden. Foy and Johnson will moderate Abolition Now! with Marquis Bey (Northwestern University) and Marlon Ross (University of Virginia). The discussions will be followed by closing remarks and a reception.