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The novelist Ralph Ellison called the Harlem Renaissance “a sophisticated moment” when, having endured the shocks of slavery and the collapse of Reconstruction, black Americans began to think of leadership on a very broad scale.
Ellison was referring to black political leadership, in the United States and abroad. But like Alain Locke and many of the founders of the Harlem Renaissance, Ellison also stressed the importance of leadership across the spectra of the arts: in literature, music, and the visual arts—not excluding dance. This short course will focus on classic works by Harlem Renaissance writers (Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes among others), artists (Jacob Lawrence and Aaron Douglas, others), and musicians (Sidney Bechet, Bessie Smith, and Duke Ellington). The indelible and cross-spectra Josephine Baker will also be discussed.
This class takes place on Fridays, September 11, 18, 25, and October 2, 9, and 16 at 11 am ET.
Programs taking place online:An access link will be emailed to you after purchase.
Programs taking place in our NYC facilities:Please read our safety guidelines before visiting our building.
Programs taking place online and in our NYC facilities:Please select which experience you wish to participate in when registering. Online participants will be emailed an access link after purchase. In-person participants should read our safety guidelines before attending the program.
Robert G. O’Meally is the Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he has served on the faculty for twenty-five years. The founder and director of Columbia’s Center for Jazz Studies, O'Meally is the author of The Craft of Ralph Ellison, Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday, The Jazz Singers, and Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey. His edited volumes include The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, Living With Music: Ralph Ellison’s Essays on Jazz, History a ...
Robert G. O’Meally is the Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he has served on the faculty for twenty-five years. The founder and director of Columbia’s Center for Jazz Studies, O'Meally is the author of The Craft of Ralph Ellison, Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday, The Jazz Singers, and Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey. His edited volumes include The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, Living With Music: Ralph Ellison’s Essays on Jazz, History and Memory in African American Culture, The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (co-editor), and the Barnes and Noble editions of Mark Twain, Herman Melville, and Frederick Douglass. For his production of a Smithsonian record set called The Jazz Singers, he was nominated for a Grammy Award. O’Meally has co-curated exhibitions for The Smithsonian Institution, Jazz at Lincoln Center and The High Museum of Art (Atlanta). He has held Guggenheim and Cullman Fellowships, and was a recent fellow at Columbia's new Institute for Ideas and Imagination at the Global Center/Paris. His new books are The Romare Bearden Reader (edited for Duke University Press, 2019) and Antagonistic Cooperation: Collage, Jazz, and American Fiction (Columbia University Press, 2020).
The Great Thinkers
Online Class