As a Radcliffe fellow, Robert F. Reid-Pharr is completing a draft of “James Baldwin: The Making of an American Icon.” Drawing heavily on archival materials housed at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Harvard’s Houghton Library, and Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the book is conservatively biographical in that it follows the story of Baldwin’s life from birth to death. At its core, however, the work is an attempt to understand how Baldwin achieved his celebrity status and why his image continues to be so compelling to the public.

Part of the 2020–2021 Fellows' Presentation Series

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