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Betsey Stockton Center for Black Church Studies · Princeton Public Library

Stay Black and Die

On Melancholy and Genius

A Book Discussion with I. Augustus Durham

May 22, 2024 • 6:00–7:30PM ET • Hybrid Event

Princeton Theological Seminary, Theodore Sedgwick Wright Library, Theron Room

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Stay Black and Die: On Melancholy and Genius

Event Description

I. Augustus Durham, assistant professor of English at Lehman College, CUNY, is joined in conversation by Kinohi Nishikawa, associate professor of English and African American studies at Princeton University, to discuss Durham’s “Stay Black and Die: On Melancholy and Genius,” an analysis of black masculinist genius as dependent upon the black maternal.

About the Book

In “Stay Black and Die,” I. Augustus Durham examines melancholy and genius in black culture, letters, and media from the nineteenth century to the contemporary moment. Drawing on psychoanalysis, affect theory, and black studies, Durham explores the black mother as both a lost object and a found subject often obscured when constituting a cultural legacy of genius across history.

He analyzes the works of Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, Marvin Gaye, Octavia E. Butler, and Kendrick Lamar to show how black cultural practices and aesthetics abstract and reveal the lost mother through performance. Whether attributing Douglass’s intellect to his matrilineage, reading Gaye’s falsetto singing voice as a move to interpolate black female vocality, or examining the women in Ellison’s life who encouraged his aesthetic interests, Durham demonstrates that melancholy becomes the catalyst for genius and genius in turn is a signifier of the maternal.

Using psychoanalysis to develop a theory of racial melancholy while “playing” with affect theory to investigate racial aesthetics, Durham theorizes the role of the feminine, especially the black maternal, in the production of black masculinist genius.

Location: Princeton Theological Seminary, Theodore Sedgwick Wright Library, Theron Room

Featured Speaker

Assistant Professor of English

I. Augustus Durham

Lehman College, City University of New York

I. Augustus Durham is Assistant Professor of English at Lehman College, City University of New York.

Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies

Kinohi Nishikawa

Princeton University

Host

Director

Rev. Dr. David G. Latimore

Betsey Stockton Center for Black Church Studies

Rev. Dr. David G. Latimore serves as the Director for the Betsey Stockton Center for Black Church Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary. ​​​

The Betsey Stockton Center brings the exceptional strengths and resources of the seminary to support the prophetic and social justice traditions of the black church. The Center also serves to advance, and be transformed by, theological education that develops and nurtures current and future leaders of black religious institutions and to be a national leader in creating knowledge that addresses, in new and innovative ways, the theological and praxiological issues confronting the communities and constituencies served by the black church.

Rev. Dr. Latimore has over twenty years of pastoral experience. He most recently served as the sixth Senior Pastor of the Fifteenth Avenue Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee. He has also served as Senior Pastor at the Mt. Zion Baptist Church (Joliet, IL), the Mt. Carmel Baptist Church (Gainesville, FL), the Southern Union Baptist Church (St. Louis, MO), and has also served the First Calvary Baptist Church (Durham, NC) as Senior Associate Minister. Rev. Dr. Latimore was licensed into ministry by Bishop Paul S. Morton at Greater St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church (New Orleans, LA).

Rev. Dr. Latimore graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. in Economics and received his Master’s of Divinity degree from Duke Divinity. He received his Doctorate of Ministry in Homiletics from McCormick Theological Seminary. His doctoral thesis, Liberating Lazarus: The Homiletical Mediation of Liberation for Congregant and Community, was awarded the John Randall Hunt Prize for Outstanding D.Min. Thesis and Academic Record. Additionally, Rev. Dr. Latimore received his Ph.D. in Theology from the University of Chicago Divinity School. His dissertation focused on the influence of the endogenous theology of neoliberalism on the ecclesiology and praxiology of African-American religious institutions.

Before seminary, Rev. Dr. Latimore enjoyed a successful career in investment management and economic development. Most recently, he served as President and CEO of the Initiative for A Competitive Inner City (ICIC), an economic research firm focused on economic development in America’s inner cities. He has served in several executive management positions in investment management firms across the nation and began his career in management consulting with Bain and Company. Rev. Dr. Latimore has faithfully served his community, providing leadership to several organizations, including as a founding member of the African-American Clergy Coalition, former Chaplain of the River Valley Juvenile Detention Center, and Chair of a local chapter of the Black Chamber of Commerce. He has also served as an Adjunct Instructor at McCormick Theological Seminary, University of Toronto, Moody Bible Institute, Dominican University, University of Chicago, and a Faculty Fellow at Belmont University.

Rev. Dr. Latimore is blessed to be the husband of Min. Tammie Brown Latimore for over twenty-nine years and the father of Grace, Sydney, David, II, Lauren, and Nina.

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Location: Princeton Theological Seminary, Theodore Sedgwick Wright Library (25 Library Pl, Princeton, NJ 08540), Theron Room. Parking is free at the Library. Click here for more details.

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Betsey Stockton Center for Black Church Studies

The Betsey Stockton Center for Black Church Studies exists to highlight the theological and religious witness, which arises out of the African American and African Diaspora Christian experience. The Center helps to prepare men and women for vocational ministry or scholarly pursuits shaped by a wider knowledge and deeper appreciation of Black life within American and global Christianity.

The Betsey Stockton Center aspires to be a national leader in research on the Black church through the collaborative creation of scholarship with leading scholars, community leaders, and pastors to address the critical issues confronting clergy, congregants, and communities served by the Black church.