Guest Seminar with Dr Douglas Field


Thursday 10th December | 5:30-7:00pm | Microsoft Teams 

For our fourth session – and last of 2020 – we are welcoming Dr. Douglas Field! Dr. Field is a Senior Lecturer in 20th Century American Literature at the University of Manchester. He is also a co-founding editor of the James Baldwin Review. He will be chairing the session and has chosen to discuss Baldwin’s essay ‘Stranger in the Village’ (1953) and Teju Cole’s 2014 rereading of Baldwin, titled ‘Black Body’. 

Baldwin’s essay describes his experiences in a remote village in Switzerland, a place he believes he may be the first black man ever to visit. Recounting the reception he receives from the inhabitants, he compares the village to the “West” and turns his attention back to the US. He argues that while he may be considered a stranger in the Swiss village, no American has the ‘luxury’ of being able to look on their black countrymen as strangers.  

Cole’s response describes his own experience and reflections as he retraces Baldwin’s steps and returns to the village more than 60 years later. 

The meeting will be hosted on Microsoft Teams. To join us on Thursday 10th December for the meeting, please email Joseph on en17jog@leeds.ac.uk. 

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