Deliberate Strangers: Transatlantic Homecomings in Henry James, James Baldwin and Stuart Hall
Returning to America in 1905 after a 20-year absence, Henry James describes himself as an alien in a familiar land: the ‘initiated native’ and the ‘inquiring stranger’ to the American scene he had long left behind. Mapping different ways of ‘coming home’, this talk engages with James Baldwin’s and Stuart Hall’s responses to James as a fellow transatlantic figure and how their use of a cultural and historical ‘Henry James’ informs their ambivalence about being a stranger and/or at home. I will discuss the ways in which Hall and Baldwin (re)position themselves in relation to exile, home and homecoming in their own ‘stranger’ texts, including Hall’s memoir Familiar Stranger and Baldwin’s essays in Notes of a Native Son.
Date:
6 March 2025, 13:00
Venue:
Cohen Quadrangle, Walton Street OX1 2HD
Venue Details:
Kloppenburg Room
Speaker:
Dr Christy Wensley (University of Oxford)
Organising department:
Faculty of English Language and Literature
Organisers:
Dr Nicholas Gaskill (University of Oxford),
Dr Nicole King (Exeter)
Part of:
American Literature Research Seminar
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Members of the University only
Editors:
Katy Terry,
Hope Lukonyomoi-Otunnu
