James: What’s in a Name? Huckleberry Finn’s Friend Jim, Reimagined

James: What’s in a Name? Huckleberry Finn’s Friend Jim, Reimagined

Zoom Video Conference | CLASS FULL - Email info@lifelonglearningcollaborative.org to be added to the waitlist.

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1/7/2025-2/25/2025
10:00 AM-12:00 PM on Tue
$45.00

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James: What’s in a Name? Huckleberry Finn’s Friend Jim, Reimagined

Zoom Video Conference | CLASS FULL - Email info@lifelonglearningcollaborative.org to be added to the waitlist.

Have you ever wondered what Huckleberry Finn’s friend, Miss Watson’s runaway slave, Jim, was doing and thinking during the times he and Huck were separated in their journey down the Mississippi in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? Percival Everett, author and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California, did. He portrays James as a man of dignity, erudition, guile, anger, love, and pride as he seeks freedom and reunion with his family in Everett’s bestselling book, James, which The New York Times book review hailed as “majestic.”

Join us as we accompany James on a journey in which the roles of Huck and Jim as narrator and character are reversed. We will learn from James’s perspective about the life experiences of enslaved persons in the antebellum United States.

Format: Participants will read Percival Everett’s James and lead a discussion of any historical theme suggested by James that resonates with them and that they believe will be of interest to the class. Possible themes include code switching, passing as white, Daniel Decatur Emmett and minstrel shows, slave narratives, religion and slavery, fugitive slave laws, and many others. This is a Zoom video conferencing class (see box on page 2 for more information).

Resources/Expenses: The novel James by Percival Everett is available at bookstores and online for about $18.00. Participants are also encouraged to use supplementary materials and media.

Coordinators: Together, Bob Kemp and Lois Kemp have co-coordinated courses on International Crime Fiction, Frankenstein at 200, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Genius and Anxiety.

Lois Kemp

Lois Kemp is a retired reading specialist and a lifelong lover of literature and art.

Robert Kemp

Bob Kemp, a retired corporate attorney, has tracked recent AI developments. He co-coordinated Huckleberry Finn, Frankenstein, and other popular LLC courses.