Wright on Antiblackness, Guilt, and Death in Native Son

A discussion of the 1951 film adaptation of Richard Wright's novel Native Son. I am particularly interested in the theme of race and guilt, a theme that is consistent across Wright's work and illuminates his existential themes of condemnation to death and the sociological construction of racial identity in the social relation.

What is Black Existentialism?

Podcasted process pieces from my course Black Existentialism. The course introduces one of the most important and potent mid-century intellectual movements - the existentialist movement - through a series of black Atlantic thinkers. Our keystone will be Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, which is arguably the most important work of Black existentialism from this period. Across the semester we will see why existentialism, with its focus on the ambiguities and ambivalences of lived-experience, had such a deep impact on Black thinkers across the diaspora. We will see these existentialist insights register in literature, philosophy, and film. Old and new.