UMSL Common Read Signature Lecture: Dr. Farah Griffin: "Radical Love in James Baldwin's 'If Beale Street Could Talk'"

Writer and scholar Farah Griffin will deliver the UMSL Common Read Signature Lecture on James Baldwin’s book "If Beale Street Could Talk" at 2 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 24, 2019, in the J.C. Penney Auditorium on UMSL’s North Campus. A reception for Griffin will immediately follow the lecture.

Griffin is chair of African-American & African Diaspora Studies, director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies and the William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African-American Studies at Columbia University. She is also an affiliate faculty member of the Center for Jazz Studies. Professor Griffin received her BA from Harvard University and her PhD from Yale University. Her major fields of interest are American and African American literature, music and history. She has published widely on issues of race and gender, feminism, jazz and cultural politics. Her books include "If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday" (2001), "Clawing At the Limits of Cool: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and The Greatest Jazz Collaboration Ever" (co-authored with Salim Washington, 2008) and "Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World War II" (2013). 

This featured program is part of a yearlong series of events supporting the UMSL Common Read, an initiative launched to spark a wide-ranging conversation about diversity and inclusion in our community and on our campus.

This program is made possible by a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion grant from the University of Missouri System and the Carpenter Lecture Series in the UMSL College of Arts and Sciences.

For more information about the Common Read and its related programming, please visit https://www.umsl.edu/divisions/artscience/common-read/home.html

Public parking for J.C. Penney is available at the North Millennium Parking Garage on East Drive on the UMSL campus. Handicapped parking is available.

https://calendar.umsl.edu/event/common_read_lecture_if_beale_street_could_talk#.XZTOHkZKiUk