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Digest entry: 03/03/2023 @ 02:16 PM

March 7th: "Frederick Douglass and the Origin of Black Speculative Fiction", a talk by Dr. James B. Haile (Jen Conner)

Tuesday, March 7th, 5:30 PM, VAC Beam Classroom 

In this talk, Professor Haile will argue that Frederick Douglass represents the beginnings of a tradition of black speculative fiction. Douglass’ combination of historical fact and the Imagination challenges the distinction between the two and our understanding of the past, present, and future of black freedom. Haile will argue that Douglass accomplishes this by way of a speculative theory of time—Douglass at once presents time as something that needs to be suspended, but also something in which and with which we are entangled. This talk will be a close reading of Douglass’ historical fiction, “The Heroic Slave” alongside his well-known work, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.

James B. Haile is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at The University of Rhode Island. Haile has held a joint appointment in the Department of English and is currently jointly appointed in the Department of Women and Gender Studies. His first book, The Buck, the Black, and the Existential Hero was published with Northwestern University Press. In addition to numerous articles on Kendrick Lamar, Ralph Ellison, and Ta-Nehisi Coates (to name a few), Haile recently completed a collection of black speculative short stories.