Department of English

• Wednesday, March 13, 2024 - 5:00pm to 7:00pm

Fisher-Bennett Hall Graduate Lounge (Room 330)

https://www.wellesley.edu/english/faculty/whitaker

Dr. Whitaker's work in progress is an excerpt from his latest project, Justified: Fascism, Racism, and Freedom Lessons from Black America. Justified tells the stories of Black Americans who have resisted fascism in ways that target and respond to the ideological nature of successful fascistic regimes: successful fascisms seize and control the functions of daily life—from birth to death. The chapter focuses on Josephine Baker (1906-1975), a Black American-turned-French singer, dancer, and actress who is regularly recognized as the first Black megastar and also became a French war-hero for her espionage services in World War II. This chapter offers her far-too-little recognized medievalism as a strategy integral to her antifascist resistance, and one that directly engages fascistic concerns about birth.