Professor Claudia Rankine spoke with Matt Jacobson on August 10, 2020 about her new book of essays, Just Us: An American Conversation, out from Graywolf Press on September 8, 2020 and her 2020 play, Help, which was postponed in March due to the pandemic. (see podcast links below)

Welcome to our September back-to-school issue of the Public Humanities @ Yale monthly e-newsletter.  

We hope you are staying safe and healthy.  

This month we continue our podcast series, "What Does the Pandemic Teach?" a series of interviews inspired by Professor Matt Jacobson's popular undergraduate lecture course, "The History of Right Now."  In this conversation, Matt Jacobson interviews Claudia Rankine, Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale, whose poems, essays, plays and teaching are helping to make sense of this moment in history.  Her newest book, Just Us: An American Conversation, will be out from Graywolf Press a week from today, on September 8, 2020.    

In this issue, Matt and Claudia discuss Just Us and her recent play, Help, which was given its World Premiere at The Shed in NYC in March before being postponed due to the pandemic.

For more reading related to this interview, here are several articles: "I Wanted to Know What Men Thought About Their White Privilege.  So I Asked" (essay by Claudia Rankine, The New York Times Magazine, July 17, 2019); "Claudia Rankine looks at White Privilege from 35,000 Feet" (The New York Times, February 26, 2020); "'We Have No Practice Talking about Race in this Country' Claudia Rankine on White Privilege and Her New Play Help" (Time Magazine, March 6, 2020).

We will relaunch our "Democracy in America" Tuesday evening at the New Haven Free Public Library series as a new monthly Webinar.  Our first event will be on Tuesday September 22 from 7:00-8:00.  Matt Jacobson will be in conversation with Andy Horowitz, author of Katrina: A History, 1915-2015 (Harvard University Press, 2020).

Feel free to share these podcasts with friends and please send us your comments and suggestions at publichumanities@yale.edu.  

And please take good care!