“You are the one who keeps talking about what I want. But I have only been talking about who I want,” says Giovanni to David in James Baldwin’s novel Giovanni’s Room (1956). The line highlights questions of identities that are raised by the novel, either explicitly or implicitly. In this roundtable, Nawal Mustafa (University of Amsterdam) and Monica Pearl (University of Manchester) will discuss how gender, race, and sexuality intersect by focusing on how the novel mobilizes whiteness to explore male homosexuality and how Paris functions as an imaginary space of escape from the gendered and racial boundaries of US American society. Moreover, how does the novel resonate in contemporary times, in which these questions of identities are more explicitly enunciated yet often are dismissed by charges of identity politics? In other words, what does the novel tell us about transcending identities in everyday life, while sustaining them as analytically valuable?  The roundtable will be moderated by Jaap Kooijman (University of Amsterdam) and is organized in collaboration with ITA (International Theater Amsterdam) to coincide with the current stage adaptation of Giovanni’s Room, directed by Eline Arbo.

Dr. Nawal Mustafa is Assistant Professor of Black Studies and Critical Race Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Her work focused on the intersections of racial categories, law and history.

Dr. Monica Pearl is Associate Professor of American Literature and Film at the University of Manchester, UK. Her essay "Chagrin d’amour: Intimacy, Shame, and the Closet in James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room" is available online, open access, in The James Baldwin Review.

https://ita.nl/nl/voorstellingen/giovannis-room-spaces-and-identities/3898922/

This roundtable is also a NICA-event: Research Master students can earn 1ECTS by attending the lecture, reading the assigned literature, and writing a 1000-word reflection. To sign up for credit, please e-mail Jaap Kooijman at J.W.Kooijman@uva.nl