The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome award-winning historians and authors Keisha N. Blain, Howard Bryant, DaMaris B. Hill, Kathryn Sophia Belle, and David A. Love for a virtual discussion on their new edited collection, Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019.
This event is free and open to the public, with registration. Book sales are encouraged through the Midtown Scholar Bookstore.
A chorus of extraordinary voices tells the epic story of the four-hundred-year journey of African Americans from 1619 to the present—edited by Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist, and Keisha N. Blain, author of Set the World on Fire.
The story begins in 1619—a year before the Mayflower—when the White Lion disgorges “some 20-and-odd Negroes” onto the shores of Virginia, inaugurating the African presence in what would become the United States. It takes us to the present, when African Americans, descendants of those on the White Lion and a thousand other routes to this country, continue a journey defined by inhuman oppression, visionary struggles, stunning achievements, and millions of ordinary lives passing through extraordinary history.
Four Hundred Souls is a unique one-volume “community” history of African Americans. The editors, Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, have assembled ninety brilliant writers, each of whom takes on a five-year period of that four-hundred-year span. The writers explore their periods through a variety of techniques: historical essays, short stories, personal vignettes, and fiery polemics. They approach history from various perspectives: through the eyes of towering historical icons or the untold stories of ordinary people; through places, laws, and objects. While themes of resistance and struggle, of hope and reinvention, course through the book, this collection of diverse pieces from ninety different minds, reflecting ninety different perspectives, fundamentally deconstructs the idea that Africans in America are a monolith—instead it unlocks the startling range of experiences and ideas that have always existed within the community of Blackness.
This is a history that illuminates our past and gives us new ways of thinking about our future, written by the most vital and essential voices of our present.
About the Panelists:
Keisha N. Blain is an award-winning historian, professor, and writer. She is currently an associate professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, the president of the African American Intellectual History Society, and an editor for The Washington Post's "Made by History" section. Her writing has appeared in popular outlets such as The Atlantic, The Guardian, Politico, and Time. She is the author of Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom and Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Enduring Message to America.
Kathryn Sophia Belle, Ph.D. is associate professor of philosophy and affiliate faculty in African American Studies as well as Women's Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Pennsylvania State University. Her areas of specialization include: African American/Africana Philosophy, Black Feminist Philosophy, Continental Philosophy (Existentialism), and Critical Philosophy of Race. Major figures she engages include Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Anna Julia Cooper, Frantz Fanon, Audre Lorde, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maria Stewart, and Richard Wright. She has published articles on race, feminism, intersectionality, and sex/sexuality. Under the name Kathryn T. Gines, she co-edited Convergences: Black Feminism and Continental Philosophy (2010) and wrote Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question (2014). She is founding director of the Collegium of Black Women Philosophers (CBWP), founding co-editor of the journal Critical Philosophy of Race, and founder of La Belle Vie Coaching, offering initiatives for high achievers, the happily unmarried, and erotic empowerment.
DaMaris B. Hill is the author of A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland (2020 NAACP Image Award nominee for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry),The Fluid Boundaries of Suffrage and Jim Crow: Staking Claims in the American Heartland, \Vi-zə-bəl\ \Teks-chərs\(Visible Textures). She has a keen interest in the work of Toni Morrison and theories regarding 'rememory' as a philosophy and aesthetic practice. Similar to her creative process, Hill's scholarly research is interdisciplinary. Hill is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Kentucky. http://damarishill.com
Howard Bryant is the author of nine books, Full Dissidence: Notes From an Uneven Playing Field, The Heritage: Black Athletes, A Divided America and the Politics of Patriotism, The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron, Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power, and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball, Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston, the three-book Legends sports series for middle-grade readers, and Sisters and Champions: The True Story of Venus and Serena Williams, and contributed essays to 16 others. He has won numerous awards, was a finalist for the National Magazine Award in 2016 and 2018, both for commentary, and earned the 2016 Salute to Excellence Award from the National Association of Black Journalists. He is a two-time Casey Award winner (Shut Out, 2003, The Last Hero, 2011) for best baseball book of the year, and a 2003 finalist for the Society for American Baseball Research Seymour Medal. The Heritage was the recipient of the 2019 Nonfiction Award from the American Library Association's Black Caucus and the Harry Shaw and Katrina Hazard Donald Award for Outstanding Work in African American Studies awarded by the Popular Culture Association.
David A. Love is a writer, journalist and commentator based in Philadelphia. He is a contributor to the Grio, CNN Opinion, The Appeal and Al Jazeera, among other publications, and teaches journalism and media studies as an adjunct professor at Rutgers University. Previously, Love served as executive director of the Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus, executive director of Witness to Innocence, and a law clerk to two federal judges. Love received a Bachelor of Arts in East Asian Studies from Harvard University, a Juris Doctor from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and a certificate in International Human Rights Law from the University of Oxford.
