Events & Calendars "Podcasting as Public Scholarship: Finding James Baldwin" with Frank Leon Roberts and Aldo B. Martin

When Professor Frank Leon Roberts first laid his hands on a complete set of The Magpie, a literary magazine James Baldwin edited as a teenager, he immediately started thinking of the scholarly possibilities: a new section in his book on Baldwin, a standalone collection of Baldwin's juvenilia, a peer-reviewed article ... a podcast? The result was Finding James Baldwin: The Magpie Years, in which Professor Roberts and podcaster Aldo B. Martin read and discuss the poems and stories Baldwin published in The Magpie. This podcast is a study of Baldwin's becoming, an exploration of his legacy and an experiment in reading the literary past from our perspective in the political present.

In this salon, Professor Roberts and Mr. Martin will discuss with Professor Christopher Grobe their choice to do this scholarly/critical work in a podcast. Special attention will be paid to podcasts' unique power to document, study and perform intellectual culture. This public conversation will be recorded as an episode of Finding James Baldwin and will be followed by an open Q+A about podcasting and the public humanities.