Dr. Martha J. Cutter delivers the inaugural Langston Hughes Lecture, given in honor of Dr. Amritjit Singh, Ohio University Langston Hughes Professor of English and African American Studies, on Tuesday, Nov. 27, at 3:30 p.m. in the Baker Multicultural Center, Room 219.
Martha J. Cutter
Cutter, Professor of English and Africana Studies at the University of Connecticut, will talk on “Crossing Borders: The Many Lives of Henry Box Brown.”
Abstract: Henry Box Brown was born into slavery in Virginia in 1815. Thirty-four years later, in 1849, he purchased a postal crate, sealed himself in it, and had himself shipped to freedom in Philadelphia, where he emerged unscathed to sing a song of celebration. Thus began Brown’s life of migration, emigration, and movement. This talk argues that Brown was an artist who defied temporal, spatial, and geographical boundaries to craft his own trickster-like border-crossing, and a remarkably transnational subjectivity.
Dr. Amritjit Singh. Photo by Noopur Banerji
The Langston Hughes Lecture Series is founded and endowed by Professor Singh, whose long and esteemed career has included several publications on Hughes. The event is also sponsored by the departments of African Studies, Philosophy, History, and Classics & Religion (Gawande Chair), and it is hosted by the English Department, African American Studies, the College of Arts & Sciences, the Vice President for Research, and the Multicultural Center.
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