Take Five future dates, presenters and books for the spring semester:
- Feb. 15: Professor Emerita of English Immaculate Kizza will lead a discussion on William Pickens’ “Bursting Bonds: The Autobiography of a ‘New Negro.’”
- March 8: Assistant Professor Hannah Wakefield will discuss Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”
- March 29: Associate Professor of Management Gail Dawson will present “There Is Confusion” by Jessie Redmon Fauset.
- April 5: Earl Braggs, Herman H. Battle Professor of African American Studies, will present “Sula” by Toni Morrison.
A University of Tennessee at Chattanooga book club is gearing up to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the publication of a significant anthology.
Take Five, a staple of the UTC Department of English’s public programming since the early 1990s, will kick off its series of five spring book club sessions on Jan. 25 by paying homage to the 1922 release of “The Book of American Negro Poetry,” the first anthology of African American poetry published by a major company (Harcourt, Brace and Company).
The kickoff event, featuring a presentation on the poetry of Langston Hughes by UTC Professor Emerita Verbie Prevost, will take place at 6 p.m. in the University Center’s Chattanooga Room with an accompanying Zoom simulcast. Take Five seminars are open to faculty, staff, students and the general public.
“Every year, we choose five books centered on some theme and get five faculty members to present on these different books, and we’ve developed a nice little following over the years,” said Take Five organizer Aaron Shaheen, the George C. Connor Professor of American Literature in the Department of English.
“Since I was awarded this professorship, it has been a big priority for me to continue the series. It’s been a labor of love, and there is a lot that goes into getting it organized.”
This spring’s theme, “The Harlem Renaissance and Its Legacy,” commemorates the centennial of “The Book of American Negro Poetry.” The collection, compiled by James Weldon Johnson, features the work of 31 poets.
The book is informally credited with catalyzing the Harlem Renaissance movement, a period of African American culture in the 1920s and 1930s known for its literature, music and art.
Johnson, a poet and diplomat who had already gained a certain amount of fame for his novel, “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man,” joins W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke in being considered the elder statesmen of the Harlem Renaissance.
“Johnson is also known today for writing the lyrics of ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing,’ and his brother, Rosamond, wrote the music for it.” Shaheen noted.
Shaheen will provide a more detailed overview of the Harlem Renaissance movement during the first Take Five session. Prevost, a long-serving member of the UTC faculty who retired in 2017, will follow by reading selections from “The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes.”
“When Verbie Prevost was on faculty in the English department, she was the head of Take Five and was the one who put it together for many, many years. She’s an institution in and of herself,” Shaheen said.
“All of the other folks who are doing Take Five this year are pretty new to it, so I wanted to let Verbie go first so she could show the others who are coming after her how it’s done and what a public lecture of this size and scope can do.”
