Panel Discussion-The Fire This Time: The Lasting Impact of James Baldwin’s Writings

The panel will also share examples of their own cutting-edge scholarship and pedagogy to reflect on the ways that Baldwin’s writing has influenced their work. The panel ultimately seeks to exemplify the profound reach of Baldwin’s writing on multiple fields of inquiry.

Each participant will present for 20 minutes followed by a moderated discussion with students and audience members.

This event is sponsored by the Center for African, Black and Caribbean Studies. Co-sponsors include the English Department, the Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging and the Center for Academic Support and Enrichment.

Moderator

Patricia G. Lespinasse, PhD

Patricia G. Lespinasse, PhD is the Director and Associate Professor of African American Literature in the African, Black, and Caribbean Studies program at Adelphi University. She specializes in nineteenth and twentieth century African American and African Diaspora Literature. Dr. Lespinasse has received fellowships from Rutgers University and SUNY Binghamton. She is the author of The Drum Is A Wild Woman: Jazz and Gender in African Diaspora Literature (2022) and Associate Editor of The New Black Renaissance: The Souls Anthology of Critical African-American Studies (2006). Her articles have appeared in the College Language Association Journal and Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal. Professor Lespinasse earned her MA, MPhil, and Ph.D. from Columbia University, and her B.A. from St. John’s University. Before coming to Adelphi, she was a tenured Associate Professor in the department of Africana Studies at Binghamton University.

Panelists

Allia Abdullah-Matta, PhD

Allia Abdullah-Matta is a poet and Professor of English at CUNY LaGuardia, the Graduate Center, and Hunter College where she teaches composition, literature, creative writing, Africana, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies courses. She writes about the culture and history of Black women and explores the presence of Black bodies and voices in fine art and poetry.

She was the co-recipient of the The Jerome Lowell DeJur Prize in Poetry (2018) from The City College of New York (CCNY). Her poetry has been published in Newtown Literary, Promethean, Marsh Hawk Review, Mom Egg Review Vox, Global City Review, and the Jam Journal Issue of Push/Pull and Queensbound. Her chapbook(s) washed clean & blues politico (2021) were published by harlequin creature (hcx).

Abdullah-Matta has published critical and pedagogical articles and serves on the Radical Teacher and WSQ (Women’s Studies Quarterly) editorial/advisory boards. She is working on a collection of poems inspired by archival and field research in South Carolina and Georgia, funded by a CUNY BRESI grant.

Rich Blint, PhD

Rich Blint, PhD is a scholar, writer, and curator. He is co-editor of a special issue of African American Review on James Baldwin (2014) and wrote the introduction and notes for Baldwin for Our Times: Writings from James Baldwin for a Time of Sorrow and Struggle (Beacon Press 2016). The co-editor (with D. Quentin Miller) of African American Literature in Transition, 1980-1990 (Cambridge University Press 2023), his writing has appeared in Bomb Magazine, African American Review, James Baldwin Review, Anthropology Now, The Believer, McSweeney’s, and the A-Line: a journal of progressive thought. Blint is currently a Research Associate in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania where he’s completing upcoming books including A Radical Interiority: James Baldwin and the Personified Self in Modern American Culture, and Duppy Umbrella and Other Stories. Curatorial projects include James Baldwin’s Global Imagination: a multi-site conference event, New York University (2011); The Year of James Baldwin-a city-wide celebration, Columbia University (2014); and The Devil Finds Work: James Baldwin on Film, The Film Society of Lincoln Center (2015). He has held academic and administrative appointments at the New School, Columbia University, and Dartmouth College. He serves on the Executive Board of African American Review and is a contributing editor at James Baldwin Review.

Susan Dinan, PhD

Susan Dinan is Dean of the Honors College and Professor of History at Adelphi. Her research interests focus on women and poor relief in Catholic Reformation France. She is immediate past president of the National Collegiate Honors Council and past president of the Northeast Regional Honors Council.