Claude McKay, Wanderings of a Rebllious Poet Film Screening

Virtual post-screening discussion and Q&A with French director Matthieu Verdeil and distinguished scholar Dr. Robert Reid-Pharr. This program is organized by the Center for Black Visual Culture and co-sponsored by NYU Institute of French Studies and NYU Department of Social and Cultural Analysis.

Claude McKay, Wanderings of a Rebellious Poet (52’ – 2025 – english subtitles) film will be shared to all registrants via link to view in advance of the program. This film link will be available for 48 hours only.

Claude McKay, Wanderings of a Rebellious Poet is a captivating voyage through the 1920s — from Harlem to Marseille, via Jamaica, Russia and Morocco — in the footsteps of Jamaican American writer Claude McKay. A rebellious voice of the Harlem Renaissance, Claude McKay spent two decades traveling the world, immersing himself in artistic and political avant-gardes while building an enduring body of work. This remarkable documentary portrait, illustrated with rare archival footage and photographs, narrated by Gaël Faye, and set to a stirring soundtrack, brings his legacy to life.

For over 20 years, film director and producer Matthieu Verdeil has pursued a distinctive path at the crossroads of history, memory, and artistic creation. He collaborates with contemporary artists such as Abraham Poincheval while dedicating much of his career to rediscovering overlooked figures and movements in cultural history, including Varian Fry and Claude McKay. Verdeil first became interested in McKay in the early 2000s, recognizing him as both a pioneer of the Harlem Renaissance and a forerunner of global Black consciousness. He began extensive archival research, working with U.S. scholars Brent Hayes Edwards and French publisher Renaud Boukh (Héliotropismes). In 2021, Verdeil directed Claude McKay: From Harlem to Marseille, the first documentary devoted to the “vagabond poet.” Combining historical rigor with poetic sensitivity, the film was screened in France, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and beyond. Currently, Verdeil is preparing a new television film dedicated to the Harlem Renaissance, continuing his long-standing commitment to amplifying forgotten or marginalized voices whose legacies continue to shape our present, and to exploring the transatlantic fabric of Black thought.

Robert F. Reid-Pharr is a Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. He holds a Ph.D. in American Studies and an M.A. in African American Studies from Yale University as well as a B.A. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  He has been the Jess and Sara Cloud Distinguished Visiting Professor of English at the College of William and Mary, the Edward Said Visiting Chair of American Studies at the American University of Beirut, the Drue Heinz Visiting Professor of English at the University of Oxford, the Carlisle and Barbara Moore Distinguished Visiting Professor of English at the University of Oregon, and the F.O. Matthiessen Visiting Professor of Gender and Sexuality at Harvard University. A prominent scholar in the field of race and sexuality studies, he is the author of four books and numerous essays. His research and writing have been supported by grants from the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, and the American Academy in Berlin.  His work has been honored by the Publishing Triangle, the Modern Language Association and the American Literature Association. In 2015 he was inducted into the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars and he is the recipient of a 2016 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.  

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Date:  December 3rd, 2026

Time:  6:00pm to 7:30pm

Location: Virtual