James Tatum
Appointments
Aaron Lawrence Professor of Classics, Emeritus
Publications
Review by Jonathan Shay of The Mourner's Song
Review of Carl J. Richard, "The Golden Age of Classics in America" (Harvard, 2009)
Review-Essay of Mary A. Favret, "War at a Distance: Romanticism and the Making of Modern Wartime" (Princeton, 2010)
Edmund Richardson, Review of William W. Cook and James Tatum, African American Writers and Classical Tradition (Chicago, 2010)
Tom F. Wright, review in the Times Literary Supplement of Cook and Tatum, AAWACT
Speaking Engagements
"Goodness Gracious! Anybody Hurt? How a Great Work Can Be a time Bomb in Your Life." Williams Lecture in the Liberal Arts, Emory University, April 8, 2015.
Friday, March 22, 2013: Ragging the Classics: "Classics Translated and Transformed," Duke University
Thursday, April 11, 2013: Frank Snowden Memorial Lecture, Howard University
Wednesday, October 3: "Ragging the Classics: The Story of the Music in James Weldon Johnson's 'Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man." A lecture/performance, with piano. Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University. https://whc.yale.edu/
Friday, October 5: "Tragicomedy Reborn: Plautus and the Making of Shakespeare's 'Othello.'" A lecture/performance, with the Ad Istud Players. Annual Meeting of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States, New York City. http://caas-cw.org/wp/?ai1ec_event=caas-2012-meeting&instance_id=5
Selected Works & Activities
This version of “The Aim Was Song” was performed in 1993 at Weatherford College in Weatherford, Texas. It is a the only record of a musical and dramatic collaboration that began in 1974 and spanned more than 30 years. Cook and Tatum performed versions of this many times at Dartmouth, Princeton, Joe Pap’s Public Theater, and many other venues public and private, most memorably when they served as an entr’ acte for a drag show (“The Male Misstique”) in New Hope, Pennsylvania. Click here to download: (Program Notes) (Original Program)
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