Poet Amiri Baraka’s writing often served as social criticism and drew attention to the systemic oppression of Black Americans. As part of a semester-long residency as M.H. Abrams Distinguished Visiting Professor, poet and theorist Fred Moten will deliver a lecture on radical Black politics and the poetry of Baraka on Thursday, March 31 at 5 p.m. in the Kaufmann Auditorium in Goldwin Smith Hall.

Credit: Chris Funkhouser

Moten’s talk, “Nothing In the Way of Things,” will focus on Baraka’s poem “Something in the Way of Things (In Town)”; the Abrams lecture is presented by the Department of Literatures in English in the College of Arts & Sciences. The lecture will be open to in-person attendance for members of the Cornell community (with Cornell ID). Anyone can livestream the lecture. Attendance guidelines are subject to change; visit english.cornell.edu/english-events for current guidelines and more information.

In a 2017 interview with The Broolyn Rail, Moten, professor of performance studies and comparative literature at New York University, said that “Baraka was at the convergence of all these things that I had been interested in: music, experimental literature, radical black politics, philosophy and literary theory – he was there for all of it, so he was the model for me.”

Amanda Brockner is MFA Graduate Program Coordinator in the Department of Literatures in English.

Read the story on the College of Arts and Sciences website.