Striking Features: Psychoanalysis and Racial Passing Narratives: A Book Launch and Talk with Donavan L. Ramon

How does psychoanalysis animate racial passing and how does racial passing inspire psychoanalysis? Despite long-held beliefs that the two have nothing in common, Donavan L. Ramon poses that psychoanalysis is relevant for understanding the reasons behind jumping the color line. Beginning with the premise that Sigmund Freud created psychoanalysis to contend with his own anxieties about race, Ramon explores canonical and non-canonical passing narratives using psychoanalytic perspectives. He closely reads narratives by Charles Chesnutt, James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Jessie Fauset, Anita Reynolds, Danzy Senna, Vera Caspary, Anatole Broyard, and Philip Roth to advance several provocative claims about the intersections of passing and psychoanalysis.

The Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice and The Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life are proud to sponsor this virtual book launch and talk with Dr. Ramon. 

Dr. Ramon will read from his book, and be in conversation with Dr. Michelle Stephens, Founding and Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice and Professor of English and Latino and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. Dr. Nancy Sinkoff, Academic Director of The Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life and Professor of Jewish Studies and History at Rutgers University will moderate the Q&A.