Communities of readers 2 . Publishing reason: John Toland and print and scribal communities T OLAND did more than simply read and write books: he was a key agent in disseminating ideas around the elite salons of early eighteenth-century Europe. In the last chapter Toland’s involvement in a world of learning and the library was explored. One of the intentions was to underscore the social dimensions of this world of learning: gaining entrance to the inner sanctum of a man’s library was a means of getting inside his head. In locating Toland in this milieu we
“Rebranding James Baldwin and His Queer Others” was a session held at the annual meeting of the American Studies Association in November 2019 in Honolulu, Hawaii. The papers gathered here show how Baldwin’s writings and life story participate in dialogues with other authors and artists who probe issues of identity and identification, as well as with other types of texts and non-American stories, boldly addressing theoretical and political perspectives different from his own. Nick Radel’s temporal challenge to reading novels on homoerotic male desire asks of us a leap of faith, one that makes it possible to read race as not necessarily a synonym for “Black,” but as a powerful historical and sexual trope that resists “over-easy” binaries of Western masculinity. Ernest L. Gibson’s engagement with Beauford Delaney’s brilliant art and the ways in which it enabled the teenage Baldwin’s “dark rapture” of self-discovery as a writer reminds us that “something [has been missing] in our discussions of male relationships.” Finally, Nigel Hatton suggests “a relationship among Baldwin, Denmark, and Giovanni’s Room that adds another thread to the important scholarship on his groundbreaking work of fiction that has impacted African-American literature, Cold War studies, transnational American studies, feminist thought, and queer theory.” All three essays enlarge our assessment of Baldwin’s contribution to understanding the ways gender and sexuality always inflect racialized Western masculinities. Thus, they help us work to better gauge the extent of Baldwin’s influence right here and right now.
James Baldwin writes within and against the testimonial tradition emerging from the Black Church, challenging the institution’s refusal to acknowledge the voices and experiences of black queer men. Baldwin’s autobiographical novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, creates a space for Baldwin’s testimony to be expressed, and also lays the foundation for a tradition of black queer artists to follow. In the contemporary moment, poet Danez Smith inhabits Baldwin’s legacy, offering continuing critiques of the rigidity of conservative Christian ideologies, while publishing and performing poetry that gives voice to their own experiences, and those of the black queer community at large. These testimonies ultimately function as a means of rhetorical resistance, which not only articulates black queer lives and identities, but affirms them.
James Baldwin might be imagined as reaching his greatest level of popularity within this current decade. With the growth of social media activist movements like Black Lives Matter, which captures and catalyzes off a Baldwinian rage, and the publishing of works directly evoking Baldwin, his voice appears more pronounced between the years of 2013 and 2015. Scholars in Baldwin studies, along with strangers who were turned into witnesses of his literary oeuvre, have contributed to this renewed interest in Baldwin, or at least have been able to sharpen the significance of the phenomenon. Publications and performances highlight Baldwin’s work and how it prefigured developments in critical race and queer theories, while also demonstrating Baldwin’s critique as both prophetic and “disturbingly” contemporary. Emerging largely from Baldwin’s timelessness in social and political discourse, and from the need to conjure a figure to demystify the absurd American landscape, these interventions in Baldwin studies follow distinct trends. This essay examines the 2013–15 trends from four vantages: an examination of a return, with revision, to popular work by Baldwin; identifying Baldwin’s work as a contributor to theoretical and critical methodology; Baldwin and intertextuality or intervocality; and a new frontier in Baldwin studies.
When James Baldwin in No Name in the Street discusses the case of Tony Maynard, who had been imprisoned in Hamburg in 1967, he emphasizes that his efforts to aid his unjustly imprisoned friend were greatly supported by his German publishing house Rowohlt and, in particular, by his then-editor Fritz Raddatz (1931–2015). While the passages on Maynard remain the only instance in Baldwin’s published writings in which Raddatz—praised as a courageous “anti-Nazi German” and a kindred ally who “knows what it means to be beaten in prison”—is mentioned directly, the relation between Baldwin and Raddatz has left traces that cover over fifty years. The African-American writer and Rowohlt’s chief editor got to know each other around 1963, when Baldwin was first published in Germany. They exchanged letters between 1965 and 1984, and many of Raddatz’s critical writings from different periods—the first piece from 1965, the last from 2014—focus of Baldwin’s books. They also collaborated on various projects—among them a long interview and Baldwin’s review of Roots—which were all published in the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit, where Raddatz served as head of the literary and arts sections from 1977 to 1985. Drawing on published and unpublished writings of both men, this article provides a discussion of the most significant facets of this under-explored relationship and its literary achievements. Thereby, it sheds new light on two central questions of recent Baldwin scholarship: first, the circumstances of production and formation crucial to Baldwin’s writings of the 1970s and 1980s, and secondly, Baldwin’s international activities, his transcultural reception and influence.
of educational material, CIDA entered into a joint venture with the NFB (see, for example, Figure 1 ) to create a publishing house called ‘Media-Sphere Youth Editions’, also located in Montreal. The new outfit employed several of CIDA photographers to help make, in the words of Mary Bramley, the ‘kids’ publications’. For instance, CIDA regular contributor, the photographer David Barbour, became the photo editor of Somewhere Today/Aujourd’hui quelque part , which contained games, reports, testimonies, and activities. Books authored by the photographer and author
). Charity Commission ( 2019 ), Official Warning of the Charity Commission for England and Wales to Oxfam – 202918 (“the Charity”) dated 7 June 2019 , https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/807954/Oxfam_GB_Official_Warning.pdf (accessed 1 October 2020 ). Charity Commission ( 2020 ), Statement of the
. E. (ed.), Alleviating World Suffering: The Challenge of Negative Quality of Life . Social Indicators Research Series , 67 ( Cham : Springer International Publishing ), pp. 335 – 47 . Féron , É. ( 2017b ), ‘ Wartime Sexual Violence against Men: Why So Oblivious? , European Review of
Publishing ), pp. 205 – 23 . Enloe , C. ( 2004 ), The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire ( Berkeley : University of California Press ). Fal-Dutra Santos , R. ( 2019 ), ‘ Challenging Patriarchy: Gender Equality and
. Around this time, I showed it to a couple of trusted colleagues and was lucky enough to be introduced to someone who had worked in the publishing industry for a long time. They advised me brilliantly to focus on the creative side, as it was a more interesting read. By now I was warming up to the idea of attempting to publish the book; so I started to shape its editorial ‘tone’ towards a general public audience, hoping it would also be of interest to current and future practitioners, whilst remaining sufficiently critically reflective. At this point I decided it would