Whole Sight: The Intersection of Culture, Faith, and the Imagination

From his creative beginnings as a political cartoonist and journalist to his success as a novelist, essayist, short story writer, screen- and teleplay writer, and university professor, Charles Johnson’s life is a model of interdisciplinarity. In his talk, Johnson addresses his personal journey in finding his passion as an artist, writer, and scholar. Johnson discusses how various interrelated factors such as race, culture, faith, and history converged to shape his work.

Johnson is a literary critic, screenwriter, philosopher, and cartoonist. He is the author of Middle Passage (1990), winner of the 1990 National Book Award, and the co-author with Patricia Smith of Africans in America: America’s Journey through Slavery (1998), the companion book for the 1998 PBS series. Johnson was a 1998 MacArthur Fellow and the 2002 recipient of the Academy Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has published collections of short fiction, screenplays, critical essays on literature and Buddhism, and has written numerous articles on writing, education, and other contemporary issues.