Events

In this session, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jeffrey C. Stewart sets the scene for an exploration of the Harlem Renaissance, examining the philosophy of life and art which launched this complex cultural movement of the 1920s and '30s. With Harlem style intellectual Lana Turner.

Dr. Jeffrey Stewart leads a course revisiting the Harlem Renaissance, accompanied by a coterie of guests, experts, and artists. Attendees will learn of the philosophy of life and art that launched it, see its effects in our contemporary culture, and understand why it had to end.

Join Dr. Stewart to explore the bold poetry of the young Black creatives of the mid-1920s in the work of Gwendolyn Bennett, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Anne Spencer, among others. A reading and conversation with poet Mahogany L. Browne follows. 

In 1940, Alain Locke dedicated The Negro in Art to his mother "in gratitude for a sense of beauty that included our racial own." The New Negro movement in the visual arts, which he had been advancing for over a decade, reveals Locke's particular views of the role African and African American art played in a burgeoning catharsis of consciousness and respect for Black life.

Among the many gifts of the Harlem Renaissance, the movement’s contribution to theater and to American democracy is perhaps the least understood and most important today. Jeffrey C. Stewart introduces us to some of the key players and voices in New York's vibrant Black theater scene during the 1920s and '30s in a presentation and conversation with playwright Michael Dinwiddie.