African American Studies at Beinecke Library

Collections, events, and news from the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of African American Arts and Letters.

Elizabeth Alexander Reading at Beinecke Library
September 12, 2016
Professor Elizabeth Alexander is a poet, essayist, playwright, and teacher.
What Would Carl Van Vechten Tweet?
September 9, 2016
Though writer, photographer, cultural critic, and modernist-era taste-maker Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964) is celebrated today for a great many achievements, we count his founding of the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of African American Arts and Letters at Yale University among his most lasting contributions to American arts and culture.
In Memoriam: Michael S. Harper
May 17, 2016
The Beinecke Library remembers poet Michael S. Harper (1938-2016).
Austin Reed's Manuscript and Others
March 3, 2016
On March 4, Beinecke, the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale, and the departments of English and African American Studies are co-sponsoring a symposium on Austin Reed’s The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict, a 19th-century memoir of Reed’s life and eventual incarceration at New York’s House of Refuge and the notorious Auburn State Prison.
Celebrating Robert B. Stepto
October 14, 2015
Bringing Unknown Patterns into View: The Critical Vision of Robert B. Stepto brings together scholars from across the field of African American Studies to celebrate Professor Stepto’s 40-year career at Yale.
New Scholarship: Picture Freedom
April 22, 2015
Scholar Jasmine Nicole Cobb compares William Townsend's sketches of captive Africans from the schooner Amistad, held at the Beinecke, to later images of African Americans.
Casting Shadows Performance
April 9, 2015
The Heritage Theater Ensemble will perform scenes from play featured in the Beinecke Exhibition “Casting Shadows” on Saturday, April 18 at 1 p.m. at Beinecke Library, 121 Wall Street.
Nathaniel Mackey at Yale
March 9, 2015
Please join us for two events with Nathaniel Mackey, winner of the 2015 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry.
New Scholarship: Johnson's "Autobiography"
March 2, 2015
Known only as the “Ex-Colored Man,” the protagonist in Johnson’s novel is forced to choose between celebrating his African American heritage or “passing” as an average white man in a post-Reconstruction America that is rapidly changing.
New Scholarship: Langston Hughes Letters
February 26, 2015
Selected Letters of Langston Hughes, Edited by Arnold Rampersad and David Roessel, Knopf, 442 pages, $35