Lavelle Porter and Matt Miller will discuss issues related to Walt Whitman, race, and Porter’s recent and highly influential article, “Should Walt Whitman Be #Cancelled?” They will discuss how black America has talked back to Whitman and how recent conversations about Whitman and his racist statements have affected the poet’s reception and legacy. What do we see when we try to look at Whitman’s comments in historical context? To what extent can the poet and his personal failings be separated from his poetry? Should they be? Porter and Miller will explore these and other questions in this important and timely dialogue.

Lavelle Porter is a writer and scholar of African-American literature. He is an assistant professor of English at the New York City College of Technology (CUNY). Last year he published The Blackademic Life: Academic Fiction, Higher Education, and the Black Intellectual and also penned the important article Should Walt Whitman Be #Cancelled? Black America talks back to “The Good Gray Poet” at 200 for JSTOR Daily.

Matt Miller is an associate professor of English at Yeshiva University in Manhattan, where he teaches American literature and creative writing. His work on Whitman includes Collage of Myself: Walt Whitman and the Making of Leaves of Grass, published by the University of Nebraska Press, and more recently, Every Hour, Every Atom: A Collection of Walt Whitman’s Early Notebooks and Fragments, co-edited with Zachary Turpin.