From his creative beginnings as a political cartoonist and journalist to his success as a novelist, essayist, short story writer, screen- and teleplay writer, and university professor, Charles Johnson’s life is a model of interdisciplinarity. In his 2007 Katz Distinguished Lecture, Johnson addresses his personal journey in finding his passion as an artist, writer, and scholar. Johnson discusses how various interrelated factors such as race, culture, faith, and history converged to shape his work.
From his creative beginnings as a political cartoonist and journalist to his acclaim as a novelist, essayist, short story writer, screen- and teleplay writer, and university professor, Charles Johnson’s life is a model of interdisciplinarity. He is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Washington and is the author of Middle Passage published 1990 and winner of the 1990 National Book Award. He is co-author with Patricia Smith of Africans in America: America’s Journey through Slavery (1998), the companion book for the 1998 PBS series of the same name. Johnson was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1998 and received the Academy Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2002.
The 2023-2024 season of Going Public features select Katz Distinguished Lectures from our archive. Learn more about the lecture series and peruse the archive:
https://simpsoncenter.org/katz-lectures.
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