{"id":16213,"date":"2020-09-04T14:00:07","date_gmt":"2020-09-04T20:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/?p=16213"},"modified":"2020-09-04T14:43:12","modified_gmt":"2020-09-04T20:43:12","slug":"reading-between-the-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/2020\/09\/reading-between-the-lines\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Between the Lines"},"content":{"rendered":"

Literary Giants, Race, and Protest<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\"Assistant<\/a>

Photo by Jennifer Coombes<\/p><\/div>\n

The last few months have turned our world upside down and inside out. A global pandemic, a flailing economy, and a generation-defining series of protests against systemic anti-Black racism and police brutality. These are times of world-altering shifts.<\/p>\n

During times like these, we often turn to art \u2014 in particular, to writers \u2014 to their worlds, works, and words.<\/p>\n

\u201cBooks help you take a historical event and put it into the context and experiences of a single person\u2019s life, however fictional that person is. You get to see how systemic racism can shape lives on a microscale,\u201d says Anya Steinberg \u201921<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

A Summer Session English class taught by Assistant Professor Michael Sawyer, which convened daily via Zoom, read and discussed six major works by iconic Black authors \u2014 \u201cInvisible Man\u201d and \u201cJuneteenth\u201d by Ralph Ellison, \u201cIf Beale Street Could Talk\u201d and \u201cAnother Country\u201d by James Baldwin, and \u201cJazz \u201cand \u201cLove\u201d by Toni Morrison.<\/p>\n

Sawyer explains that the contemporary relevance of these works and words, in light of the resurfacing of anti-Black racism and consequential equity-driven protest, creates a \u201cpositive impatience, where I want to dig into texts more urgently \u2014 martialing that impatience toward discovery.\u201d Sawyer\u2019s scholarship and teaching falls in both the Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Studies and English departments. He is also the founder and director of the Africana Intellectual Project at Colorado College, designed to enable CC and its intellectual community to explore the lives, art, intellect, and culture of people of African descent.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of these texts deal with street protest and a response to violence. There\u2019s something about the fluency of three artists articulating issues in vastly different ways \u2014 they combine to create a rich environment and a very detailed portrait of these problems,\u201d Sawyer says.<\/p>\n

Discussing such important and current topics is a challenge at the best of times. Having to do so via distance classroom spaces brings a new level of challenge to bear on the material and those involved.<\/p>\n

\u201cA discussion-based course certainly presents a challenge; our small size has allowed us to have fairly organic, free-flowing discussions,\u201d says Jenna Kalishman \u201922<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the students are literally in the same spaces as the protests and unrest \u2014 in Minneapolis, for example \u2014 that we\u2019re seeing nationwide,\u201d explains Sawyer. \u201cThat immediacy, it gives these works a new perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perspective is a key element of the dialogue and investigation of these authors\u2019 works. Ellison, Baldwin, and Morrison are each dealing with confronting racist systems, doing so in their own ways, from their own perspectives. From Ellison\u2019s \u201cInvisible Man,\u201d which Sawyer considers \u201cthe greatest Western novel,\u201d to Morrison\u2019s work as \u201cour greatest lyricist,\u201d to Baldwin\u2019s searing prose as \u201cthe greatest translator of events\u201d \u2014 each brings a different craft as a storyteller to the events of their day, as well as ours.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are all incredible, accurate describers of the machines that they\u2019re confronting; white supremacy, patriarchy, homophobia,\u201d says Sawyer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cTheir works, it shows just how much there is in the canon that we\u2019re not immediately familiarized with or told about,\u201d says Michael Gorman \u201921<\/strong>. \u201cThese authors capture societal dynamics in such unique ways; they each have a different style, but they\u2019re each so smart in how they wrap up other critiques of works and methods.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kalishman agrees. \u201cReading and discussing the texts of some of America\u2019s most influential Black authors has obviously proved relevant to current events. While they haven\u2019t changed my engagement in terms of direct action, these texts have certainly expanded my learning and knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

That engagement takes many forms, but for some in the class, it\u2019s far more localized than for others.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think with or without the authors, I would\u2019ve had a hard time staying unengaged with the current events because I live in Minneapolis,\u201d says Steinberg. Minneapolis is ground zero for the worldwide movement of Black-led and -centered protest and demonstration. On May\u00a025, 2020,\u00a0George Floyd, a 46-year-old\u00a0Black man, was killed in\u00a0Minneapolis during an arrest.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn each of the books we\u2019ve read, there has been at least a scene or multiple scenes involving police violence. That\u2019s across Ellison, Baldwin, and Morrison. It\u2019s striking to see that this is something the Black community has been grappling with for decades, not just in the past month,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Summer Session English class taught by Assistant Professor Michael Sawyer read and discussed six major works by iconic Black authors, in the context of current events and protests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1388,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[114],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-16213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-summer-2020","tag-features"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16213"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16487,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16213\/revisions\/16487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}