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A conversation with Professor Eddie S. Glaude Jr., author of Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, moderated by Keri Day, associate professor of constructive theology and African American religion.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr. is an intellectual who speaks to the complex dynamics of the American experience. His most well-known books, Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul, and In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America, take a wide look at Black communities, the difficulties of race in the United States, and the challenges our democracy faces. He is an American critic in the tradition of James Baldwin and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In his writings, the country’s complexities, vulnerabilities, and the opportunities for hope come into full view. Hope that is, in one of his favorite quotes from W.E.B Du Bois, “not hopeless, but a bit unhopeful.”
He is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor and chair of the Department of African American Studies, a program he first became involved with shaping as a doctoral candidate in religion, at Princeton University. He is the former president of the American Academy of Religion. His books on religion and philosophy include An Uncommon Faith: A Pragmatic Approach to the Study of African American Religion; African American Religion: A Very Short Introduction; and Exodus! Religion, Race, and Nation in Early 19th Century Black America, which was awarded the Modern Language Association’s William Sanders Scarborough Book Prize. Glaude is also the author of two edited volumes, and many influential articles about religion for academic journals. He has also written for the likes of The New York Times and Time Magazine.
Known to be a convener of conversations and debates, Glaude takes care to engage fellow citizens of all ages and backgrounds — from young activists, to fellow academics, journalists and commentators, and followers on Twitter in dialogue about the direction of the nation. His scholarship and his sense of himself as a public intellectual are driven by a commitment to think carefully with others in public.
Glaude’s most recent book, Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, was released on June 30, 2020. Of Baldwin, Glaude writes, “Baldwin’s writing does not bear witness to the glory of America. It reveals the country’s sins, and the illusion of innocence that blinds us to the reality of others. Baldwin’s vision requires a confrontation with our history (with slavery, Jim Crow segregation, with whiteness) to overcome its hold on us. Not to posit the greatness of America, but to establish the ground upon which to imagine the country anew.”
Some like to describe Glaude as the quintessential Morehouse man, having left his home in Moss Point, Mississippi at age 16 to begin studies at the HBCU. He holds a master’s degree in African American studies from Temple University, and a PhD in religion from Princeton University. He began his teaching career at Bowdoin College. In 2011 he delivered Harvard’s Du Bois lectures. In 2015 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Colgate University, delivering commencement remarks titled “Turning Our Backs,” which was recognized by The New York Times as one of the best commencement speeches of the year. He is a columnist for Time Magazine and a MSNBC contributor on programs like Morning Joe, and Deadline Whitehouse with Nicolle Wallace. He also regularly appears on Meet the Press on Sundays. Glaude hosts the podcast AAS 21, recorded at Princeton University in Stanhope Hall, the African American Studies department’s home.
Keri Day is associate professor of constructive theology and African American religion at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, NJ. Day earned her PhD in religion from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. She earned an MA in religion and ethics from Yale University Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut, and a Bachelor of Science from Tennessee State University in Nashville. Her teaching and research interests are in womanist/feminist theologies, social critical theory, cultural studies, economics, and Afro-Pentecostalism. Her first academic book, Unfinished Business: Black Women, The Black Church, and the Struggle to Thrive in America, was published in November of 2012. Her second book, Religious Resistance to Neoliberalism: Womanist and Black Feminist Perspectives, was published in December of 2015. In 2017, she was recognized by ABC News as one of six black women at the center of gravity in theological education in America.
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Sponsored by the Religion and Society Program and Office of Multicultural Relations.
