Professor and Chair of the Department of American Culture
amcult-chair@umich.eduOffice Information:
Plese use amcult-chair@umich.edu for messages only
Please send calendar invitations to: lsa-ac-chair-calendar@umich.edu
734-615-6473
Executive Assistant: Mary Freiman, mlfr@umich.edu
3703 Haven Hall, 1045
Fields of Study:
African American and American literary and cultural studies
Education/Degree:
Ph.D., University of Oregon, 1992 M.A., Warsaw University, Poland, 1987Highlighted Work and Publications
Me and My House: James Baldwin's Last Decade in France
Magdalena J. Zaborowska
The last sixteen years of James Baldwin’s life (1971–1987) unfolded in a village in the south of France, in a sprawling house nicknamed “Chez Baldwin.” In Me and My House Magdalena J. Zaborowska employs Baldwin’s home space as a lens through which to expand his biography and explore the politics and poetics of blackness, queerness, and domesticity in his com‑ plex and underappreciated later works. Zaborowska shows how the themes of dwelling and black queer male sexuality in The Welcome Table, Just Above My Head, and If Beale Street Could Talk directly stem from Chez Baldwin’s influence on the...
See MoreJames Baldwin's Turkish Decade: Erotics of Exile
Magdalena J. Zaborowska
Between 1961 and 1971 James Baldwin spent extended periods of time in Turkey, where he worked on some of his most important books. In this first in-depth exploration of Baldwin’s “Turkish decade,” Magdalena J. Zaborowska reveals the significant role that Turkish locales, cultures, and friends played in Baldwin’s life and thought. Turkey was a nurturing space for the author, who by 1961 had spent nearly ten years in France and Western Europe and failed to reestablish permanent residency in the United States. Zaborowska demonstrates how Baldwin’s Turkish sojourns enabled him to re-imagine himself... See More