Newberry Seminar on Religion and Culture in the Americas, March 6, 2020
Newberry Library Scholarly Seminars
Religion and Culture in the Americas Seminar
Muhammad Ali’s Exceptionalist
Double Cross
M. Cooper Harriss, Indiana University
Friday, March 6, 2020 3-5 pm
The Newberry Library
60 W. Walton St.
Chicago, IL 60610
“I am America!” proclaimed Cassius Clay, announcing his conversion to Islam in 1964—a denomination echoed by President Barack Obama on the occasion of Muhammad Ali’s 2016 death: “Ali was America.” Separated by a half-century, these claims stand at cross-purposes. The former takes exception to the very exceptionalism that Obama claims for the boxer in the latter statement. This essay traces Ali’s relationship to US exceptionalism, a trajectory inextricable from Ali’s identity as both a globally-significant American Muslim in an Islamophobic age and his simultaneous emergence as an American icon. What are the terms of Ali’s double cross?
Respondent: Jane Rhodes, University of Illinois at Chicago
Newberry Scholarly Seminars papers are pre-circulated electronically. If you plan to attend, contact scholarlyseminars@newberry.org for a copy. Please do not request a paper unless you plan to attend.
Mary Hale, Newberry Library, halem@newberry.org.