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Last year, in the dispatch “There Is No Texting at James Baldwin’s Table,” I began to assess the ways in which audiences were engaging with Baldwin’s writing at several public discussions that I co-facilitated with NYC actor/comedian Grant Cooper. Based on the initial reaction to two five-part Baldwin conversations at a high school and middle school in Manhattan, I posited that a need for meaningful communion is drawing people to discuss the writer. As I wrote that article, I was busy scheduling seven new Baldwin discussions in communities across New Jersey and another five-part series in Manhattan. Having completed those sessions, I am pleased to report that Baldwin’s welcome table is indeed a powerful vehicle for engaging in impactful dialogue. This dispatch will demonstrate that discussing Baldwin not only opened an avenue for productive sharing but went further by inspiring people to ask how they could contribute to hastening positive social and personal transformation. Three questions will frame this analysis of putting the welcome table into practice: How many people want to sit at James Baldwin’s table? Can conversations about James Baldwin sustain more “welcome table moments”? Can these interactions create a sense of kinship that deepens personal interaction in the digital age?
Clearly there is a unique hunger for Baldwin’s wisdom in this historical moment, as illustrated by Raoul Peck’s film, reprints of several Baldwin books, exhibits, and other events. This essay describes the genesis of two five-part public discussions on the works of James Baldwin that were co-facilitated by African-American Studies scholar Dr. Lindsey R. Swindall and actor Grant Cooper at two schools in New York City in the 2016–17 academic year. These discussion series led to numerous Baldwin discussion events being scheduled for the winter and spring of 2018. The surprising popularity of these programs prompted Swindall to wonder: Why do people want to discuss Baldwin now? The first of two parts, this essay speculates that many people in the digital age long for a conversational space like the one Baldwin created at the “welcome table” in his last home in France. The second essay—which is forthcoming—will confirm whether discussion events held in 2018 harmonize with the welcome table thesis.
the Mediterranean are worthy of public discussion and debate. As mentioned, various researchers (e.g. Arsenijevic et al. , 2017 ) have sought to study whether search and rescue efforts ‘pull’ people towards them or not, and hence might be endangering them. Political contestation is unavoidable when publics across Europe are as divided as they are about the relative value of securing the continent’s borders from
-master with 216 German migrants and 14 crew on board, off the North Sea island of Spiekeroog on 6 November 1854, when 72 migrants died. 16 At the time, most German states were countries of emigration, with 1.5 million Germans migrating to the United States between 1845 and 1855 alone. While there were very few references to the DGzRS in the public discussion over the fate of the Sea-Watch 3 , it is hardly necessary to remind Germans of its existence, or of the fact that its work is entirely privately funded, because of the ubiquity of small wooden collection boxes in the
intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community’s own work was politicized. As the national intelligence officer responsible for the Middle East from 2000 to 2005, I witnessed all of these disturbing developments. Public discussion of prewar intelligence on Iraq has
1990s had their origins in 1988 and 1989: established as cooperatives, they turned their legal status into Ltd. or Inc. in 1990 and continued to do the same, or similar business, as they had before 1989. Economic experts and managerial classes Public discussion of the draft act on state enterprise became an important event in 1987 not only in terms of economic relations, but also in respect to popular criticism.15 For experts in the state apparatus, the draft was a welcome chance to consider and contemplate fundamental reforms of an ineffective economy. Even though
new emphasis for future research on Englishness. We will now conclude by providing a discussion of these main themes. 8.1 Folk, politics and reconciliation Of the various artistic and contextual elements of the English folk resurgence discussed in this book, the feature that has generated the greatest public discussion and debate has been the appropriation and mobilisation of folk music by the BNP. The far-right’s involvements with contemporary English folk not only resulted in the development of the Folk Against Fascism campaign (as discussed in 7.4.2) but has also
public discussions of Commonwealth immigration. Colonial subjects were still viewed as children in need of protection and guidance. Britain’s role as the ‘mother country’ was a cornerstone of the 1948 Nationality Act, which was based on the view that as a former imperial ruler, Britain was obliged to take some responsibility for her subjects. But paternalism was not new; it had been a feature of British
reviews of approaches to suicide prevention and the formulation of national suicide prevention strategies’.28 David Adams, an Irish Times columnist, claimed that ‘while suicide remains a taboo subject we will continue avoiding a much-needed open and honest public discussion on the subject’.29 What is even more striking, however, is the taboo around particular causes from those whose alleged brief is to prevent or contain suicide. The Young Men and Suicide Project was an initiative undertaken by the Men’s Health Forum in Ireland, and supported by the Institute of Public
Things move fast in the world of the videogame and videogame scholarship. Given that videogames constitute a new arena for academic study, many of the recent publications have tended to address games in a rather generalist manner, often as a means of mapping the field. Any intersection between the world of the scholar and the world of the videogame, therefore, has to be carefully negotiated. This collection represents a series of frozen analytic moments, and an opportunity for reflection among a range of critics approaching games from different places and with varied disciplinary backgrounds. It takes a 'bottom-up' approach, seeking not to survey the entire field, but instead to move closer to the experience of playing particular games. The experience of being-in-the-world of a game is contingent on the particular design, across a range of dimensions, of a given game and that design provides the formal and structural features of a game. Within the terms of the narratology/ludology debate that so characterized early public discussions about the action of scholarship in relation to videogames, it might be assumed that any focus on games as texts refers only to their non-interactive elements. The essays address a game or group of games in detail and in so doing go some way towards addressing the very complex and diversely rendered relationship between videogame text, play and performance. The experience of playing games, in all its various affective colouring, occurs through the interchange between technology, aesthetics and the player's own particular investments.