In the first biography of Baya, Yale professor Alice Kaplan recounts how this young woman seemingly trapped in subsistence farming became a sensation in Paris in 1947, then mysteriously faded from the history of modern art—only to reemerge after independence as an icon of Algerian artistic heritage.
This event will be moderated by James McAuley.
About the speakers:
Alice Kaplan is Sterling Professor of French at Yale. She is the author of many books at the intersection of literature and history, including Looking for the Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic and The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach. Co-founder of the Yale Translation Initiative, former Guggenheim Fellow, member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and recipient of the French Légion d’Honneur as well the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History (for The Collaborator), Alice is a proud member of the American Library in Paris Writers Council.
James McAuley is the author of The House of Fragile Things: Jewish Art Collectors and the Fall of France, which won the National Jewish Book Award in 2022. He is a former Paris correspondent for the Washington Post, and his writing has been anthologized in the Best American Essays of 2024.
