Upcoming talk: A Dream Deferred

‘A Dream Deferred: Nina Simone and the Work of Mourning’

Tuesday, 19 November 2013, 16:15, Arts A155, University of Sussex

I’ll be giving a talk hosted by the Centre for American Studies, University of Sussex.

This talk presents work from my recent book about the late singer, songwriter, pianist and civil rights activist Nina Simone. It focuses on Simone’s reaction to what she saw as the failure of the civil rights movement and how that reaction was played out in her work from the end of the 1960s onwards, blending into a personal but still critical nostalgia in her late work. The talk also makes reference to the recent commemoration of Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech and Nina Simone’s response to King’s murder. It also acts as a commemoration of Simone and her legacy, with 2013 marking 80 years since her birth and 10 since her death.