Faculty Spotlight: Joseph Earl Thomas on Memoir, Realism, Gayl Jones, and the Philadelphia Difference
In episode five of Faculty Spotlight, Lauren and Mark sit down with Joseph Earl Thomas, BISR faculty and author the acclaimed memoir Sink. The three discuss: memoir-writing and the art of “un-knowing” writing; literary realism in the 21st century; having, or faking having, a “world picture”; thinking trans-culturally with Sylvia Wynter; Gayl Jones and the art of literary maximalism (and why it’s not just for “white boys”); why “resignification” doesn’t necessarily change the material world; and what it’s like to live, work, and think in Philadelphia.
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Notations
Mark Anthony Richardson, Year of the Rat (2016), Messiahs (2021)
Elaine Auyoung, “Rethinking the Reality Effect: Detail and the Novel”
Thomas Nagel, View from Nowhere (1986)
Sylvia Wynter, “Beyond Liberal and Marxist Leninist Feminisms”
Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey (1988)
Mat Johnson, Pym (2011)
Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection (1997)