On Tuesday, November 21st at 3pm in the Great Room of 19 University Place, the NYU Department of Comparative Literature will host The Ties that Bind: Reflections on Black Intellectual History of South Africa and the US in the 1960s, a talk by Siphiwo Mahala of the University of Johannesburg. NYU's Paul J. Edwards will be the respondent.
This talk will explore the burgeoning camaraderie, cultural exchange and political solidarity that developed between Langston Hughes and Bloke Modisane in the 1960s as they shared with one another "essential tenets of blackness."
This in-person event is open to the public - advanced registration is required for non-NYU visitors. Instructions for accessing campus will be sent to you upon registration.
About the Speaker:
Siphiwo Mahala is an award-winning author, editor, playwright and academic from South Africa. He is the author of the novel When a Man Cries (2007), two short story collections, African Delights and Red Apple Dreams and Other Stories, and two critically acclaimed plays, The House of Truth and Bloke and His American Bantu. His latest book Can Themba: The Making and Breaking of the Intellectual Tsotsi, offers the most definitive study of Can Themba’s life history. He is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Johannesburg, Senior Fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study, and editor of Imbiza Journal for African Writing.
About the Respondent:
Paul J. Edwards is an Assistant Professor of English and Dramatic Literature At New York University and a book reviews editor for The Black Scholar. His research and teaching span across the fields of African American studies with a focus on global Afro-modernism and gender and sexuality studies. He received his PhD in American Studies from Boston University and previously held a postdoctoral fellowship in African American literature at Rutgers University under Dr. Cheryl A. Wall. His current book project, The Black Wave: The New Negro Renaissance in Interwar Germany, reveals the effects of the New Negro/Harlem Renaissance in Germany from 1925 to 1938. Drawing together conversations in performance studies, modernist studies, and Black studies, the book reflects extensive archival research in Germany, Austria, and the United States. At the heart of this project is the insight that the Black arts renaissance extended beyond the known centers of the Black Atlantic and had a profound effect on the cultures of Weimar and Nazi Germany. His research appears in Modern Drama, German Studies Review, Theatre Survey, TDR/The Drama Review, Modernism/modernity, and The Black Scholar.
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