Singing the Nation: memory and the afterlives of Lift Every Voice and Sing

Description

CDH welcomes Dr Sonya Donaldson from New Jersey City University for this seminar as part of the Digital Afterlives Network. This seminar will examine how performances and creative re-compositions of James Weldon Johnson’s ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing,’ also known as the ‘Black National Anthem,’ alert us to the ways in which digital ephemera operate as distinct and interacting sites of ‘memory’. These compositions, as part of a collection in the DH project, Singing the Nation Into Being, raises questions about the relationship between the archive and the afterlives of ephemeral objects.
Sonya Donaldson is Assistant Professor of World Literature at New Jersey City University. Her book project, Reunification and Its Discontents, examines Afro-German identity in the post-reunification era. Her research interests include twentieth- and twenty-first century African American and African Diasporic literature, with a focus on migration narratives and globalization; speculative fiction; and digital humanities.
Register on Eventbrite to receive the Zoom link: https://singing-the-nation-into-being.eventbrite.co.uk/
Digital Afterlives Network meets on the second, sixth, and seventh Tuesdays of every term from 4pm—6pm. For more information on the Digital Afterlives Research Network: https://www.cdh.cam.ac.uk/afterlives
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