Blackness is a Place: James Baldwin and the Spatiality of Black Lives in the United States

This project considers James Baldwin’s uses of Black musical traditions and forms of transnational mobility and migration to comment on how Blackness and space are co-constitutive for Black Americans. This work examines patterns in migration and social control that worked to make the continental U.S. indebted to and influenced by Black Southern cultures. It considers how Baldwin connects Black mobilities and Southern Black inheritances in his writing, interviews, and collaborative filmmaking. This dissertation also reads Baldwin alongside fellow artists who are co-practitioners that pay tribute to Southern genius. From Bessie Smith to Beyoncé, black artists create the sonic archive of multiple Souths that Baldwin writes into and alongside.