Ralph Ellison Walks Into a Jazz Bar

Season 1, Episode 1

Ralph Ellison Walks Into a Jazz Bar

A Literary Chat with Marc Conner

The university provost and Jo and James Ballengee Professor of English talks Ralph Ellison and the writer’s views on America’s complex history. Conner discusses Ellison scholarship at W&L, how he came to co-edit a book of his letters, and how Ellison’s personality emerges in the thousands of his letters preserved in the Library of Congress.
Recorded March 12, 2020
Aired June 23, 2020

"What I find so amazing about Ellison is he's always going back and forth between the tragic and the comic. Right when he is composing a lament on American racial injustice, he's also giving us a presentation of the immense promise and uplift of America."
Marc Conner
Jo and James Ballengee Professor of English


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