Dr. Ian Afflerbach of the University of North Georgia will lead a discussion on the film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967).
This iconic comedy-drama, directed by Stanley Kramer, revolves around the question of interracial marriage. Joanna Draper--wealthy, beautiful, and white--introduces her parents to her black fiance, played by the dashing Sidney Poitier. Suddenly, everyone involved has an opinion about what the future of this interracial couple should look like.
As we'll discuss, this film was released the same year that the Supreme Court finally struck down "miscegenation" laws with Loving v. Virginia (1967), and its characters capture deep-seated racial anxieties that many Americans would continue to harbor long after the Civil Rights movement.
You can check out a copy of the movie from the library's collection or attend a screening at 10:30 a.m. the morning of the discussion.
About Dr. Ian Afflerbach
Dr. Ian Afflerbach is an Assistant Professor of American Literature at the University of North Georgia, where he teaches and researches in 20th century American literature, political history, African-American studies, and the history of ideas. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis, and has lived in Montreal, Vermont, North Carolina, and Germany. His writing has appeared in journals like English Literary History, Modern Fiction Studies, and Studies in the Novel. He was named a 2019 Fellow by the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies in Mainz, Germany.
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