First-Year Seminar Presents
So Black and Blue: Ralph Ellison in Five Frequencies
Monday, May 9, 2016
Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater
4:45 pm – 6:15 pm EDT/GMT-4
4:45 pm – 6:15 pm EDT/GMT-4
Lecture by Professor Peter L'Official
The most memorable line in Ralph Ellison’s 'Invisible Man' is also its most enigmatic -- as well as its final -- one, presented as either riddle or question: “Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?” What precedes that line is around 600 pages of text wherein a young, black, unnamed narrator loses and finds himself and finds his voice, after trying on many different oratorical styles and modes throughout the course of the novel. This journey also partly describes that of author Ralph Ellison who, like his narrator, drew from many different political and social influences on the way towards becoming a writer, and -- with 'Invisible Man' -- inventing one of the most elastic and protean metaphors for race ever conceived. This lecture offers five visions of Ellison, his novel, and their varied cultural contexts in a tribute to Ellison's narrator's expressed wish to hear "five recordings of Louis Armstrong playing and singing 'What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue' -- all at the same time. Peter L’Official is an Assistant Professor of Literature at Bard College. His areas of specialization include African American literature and culture, 20th- and 21st-century American literature, 20th- and 21st-century American art and architecture, and literature's relationship to the built environment. He has been an occasional contributor to 'The Los Angeles Review of Books', 'GQ.com', 'Grantland' (now sadly defunct), and elsewhere. His book, currently in progress and titled, 'Urban Legends: The South Bronx in Representation and Ruin', examines the literary and visual manifestations of the built environment of the Bronx in fiction, photography, visual art, and film of the late 1960s through the 1980s.
For more information, call 845-758-6822.
Time: 4:45 pm – 6:15 pm EDT/GMT-4
Location: Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater