William J. Maxwell
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691130200
- eISBN:
- 9781400852062
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691130200.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This part argues that Afro-modernist literature “pre-responded” to FBI inspection, internalizing the likelihood of Bureau ghostreading and publicizing its implications with growing bluntness and ...
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This part argues that Afro-modernist literature “pre-responded” to FBI inspection, internalizing the likelihood of Bureau ghostreading and publicizing its implications with growing bluntness and embellishment over the years from 1919 to 1972 and beyond. Thus, the fifth and last of the book's five theses, and the one that finally involves closer encounters with black poems, stories, essays, and novels than with their silhouettes in FBI files: Consciousness of FBI ghostreading fills a deep and characteristic vein of African American literature. Section 1 examines decisive responses to FBI surveillance in both the early journalism and the foundational poetry of the Harlem movement. Section 2 charts the FBI's migrant status in Afro-modernism from the mid-1930s through the early Cold War. Section 3 focuses on the expatriate trio of Richard Wright, William Gardner Smith, and Chester Himes, and their interlocking fictions of Paris noir in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Section 4 widens its focus, owing to the profusion of black Bureau writing in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The final section sketches African American literature's less heated skirmish with the FBI after Hoover's death—a skirmish now led by black women including Ai, Audre Lorde, Danzy Senna, and Gloria Naylor.Less
This part argues that Afro-modernist literature “pre-responded” to FBI inspection, internalizing the likelihood of Bureau ghostreading and publicizing its implications with growing bluntness and embellishment over the years from 1919 to 1972 and beyond. Thus, the fifth and last of the book's five theses, and the one that finally involves closer encounters with black poems, stories, essays, and novels than with their silhouettes in FBI files: Consciousness of FBI ghostreading fills a deep and characteristic vein of African American literature. Section 1 examines decisive responses to FBI surveillance in both the early journalism and the foundational poetry of the Harlem movement. Section 2 charts the FBI's migrant status in Afro-modernism from the mid-1930s through the early Cold War. Section 3 focuses on the expatriate trio of Richard Wright, William Gardner Smith, and Chester Himes, and their interlocking fictions of Paris noir in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Section 4 widens its focus, owing to the profusion of black Bureau writing in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The final section sketches African American literature's less heated skirmish with the FBI after Hoover's death—a skirmish now led by black women including Ai, Audre Lorde, Danzy Senna, and Gloria Naylor.
William J. Maxwell
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691130200
- eISBN:
- 9781400852062
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691130200.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Retracing some of the main lines of FBI history, this part demonstrates how Bureau counterliterature was stamped by four distinct phases of the institution's developing Hoover era, altogether long ...
More
Retracing some of the main lines of FBI history, this part demonstrates how Bureau counterliterature was stamped by four distinct phases of the institution's developing Hoover era, altogether long enough to form a kind of police Mesozoic. It examines the glamorous and violent phase of Bureau history between the New Deal and the early 1940s. It then analyzes the changing shape of Bureau counterliterature during World War II, and does the same for the McCarthy period. Finally, it reviews the creative upheaval in Bureau counterliterature during the Black Power 1960s and 1970s. Author files and adjoining documents disclose that Hoover's FBI, the principal custodian of “lit.-cop federalism,” angled during all these phases to enlarge the state's ability to determine aesthetic value, scheming and networking like some National Endowment for Artistic Gumshoes. But these documents likewise show that his Bureau pursued changeable, art-educated enhancements of police tactics, converting varying currencies of literary capital into novel forms of criminological capital. Through both types of meddling, the Bureau paved the way to this book's second thesis, of necessity its most historically sprawling: The FBI's aggressive filing and long study of African American writers was tightly bound to the agency's successful evolution under Hoover.Less
Retracing some of the main lines of FBI history, this part demonstrates how Bureau counterliterature was stamped by four distinct phases of the institution's developing Hoover era, altogether long enough to form a kind of police Mesozoic. It examines the glamorous and violent phase of Bureau history between the New Deal and the early 1940s. It then analyzes the changing shape of Bureau counterliterature during World War II, and does the same for the McCarthy period. Finally, it reviews the creative upheaval in Bureau counterliterature during the Black Power 1960s and 1970s. Author files and adjoining documents disclose that Hoover's FBI, the principal custodian of “lit.-cop federalism,” angled during all these phases to enlarge the state's ability to determine aesthetic value, scheming and networking like some National Endowment for Artistic Gumshoes. But these documents likewise show that his Bureau pursued changeable, art-educated enhancements of police tactics, converting varying currencies of literary capital into novel forms of criminological capital. Through both types of meddling, the Bureau paved the way to this book's second thesis, of necessity its most historically sprawling: The FBI's aggressive filing and long study of African American writers was tightly bound to the agency's successful evolution under Hoover.
William J. Maxwell
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691130200
- eISBN:
- 9781400852062
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691130200.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This part illuminates the interpretive assumptions of Bureau ghostreading against the backdrop of the best-documented entanglement of American criticism with American espionage: namely, the firsthand ...
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This part illuminates the interpretive assumptions of Bureau ghostreading against the backdrop of the best-documented entanglement of American criticism with American espionage: namely, the firsthand stamp of the New Criticism on the counterintelligence branch of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Section 1 explores CIA-endorsed formalism, its high-wire, Yale-rooted history, which was eventually integrated into FBI critical practice. Section 2 confirms that the Bureau ghostreaders cobbled together a distinct mode of FBI reading decades before the CIA's creation, a didactic yet meticulous biohistoricism in sympathy with academic schools of the late 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s. Section 3 looks into the background and outlook of the FBI agents tasked with criticizing Afro-modernism. Finally, section 4 assesses the impact of FBI ghostreading on an interested non-Bureau audience: the self-appointed model citizens who turned to Hoover as a literary-critical wise man and potential literary-critical collaborator. This part proposes the third and thus far most literary of the five theses: The FBI is perhaps the most dedicated and influential forgotten critic of African American literature.Less
This part illuminates the interpretive assumptions of Bureau ghostreading against the backdrop of the best-documented entanglement of American criticism with American espionage: namely, the firsthand stamp of the New Criticism on the counterintelligence branch of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Section 1 explores CIA-endorsed formalism, its high-wire, Yale-rooted history, which was eventually integrated into FBI critical practice. Section 2 confirms that the Bureau ghostreaders cobbled together a distinct mode of FBI reading decades before the CIA's creation, a didactic yet meticulous biohistoricism in sympathy with academic schools of the late 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s. Section 3 looks into the background and outlook of the FBI agents tasked with criticizing Afro-modernism. Finally, section 4 assesses the impact of FBI ghostreading on an interested non-Bureau audience: the self-appointed model citizens who turned to Hoover as a literary-critical wise man and potential literary-critical collaborator. This part proposes the third and thus far most literary of the five theses: The FBI is perhaps the most dedicated and influential forgotten critic of African American literature.
William J. Maxwell
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691130200
- eISBN:
- 9781400852062
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691130200.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This part marshals the largely uncompiled evidence of FBI author files to suggest that the worst suspicions about the stakeout of Paris noir were basically correct—that Wright was not too wrong, it ...
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This part marshals the largely uncompiled evidence of FBI author files to suggest that the worst suspicions about the stakeout of Paris noir were basically correct—that Wright was not too wrong, it follows, when he darkly joked that any African American “who is not paranoid is in serious shape,” at least if he or she sought literary license outside the United States during the Hoover era. Two decades before American involvement in World War II opened the floodgates of black Paris, the FBI began to influence the movements of expatriate Afro-modernists—this even as it manipulated “lit.-cop federalism” to nationalize itself in the mind of white America. In the French capital of black transnationalism, and satellites beyond, FBI agents and informers kept tabs on a network of black literary travelers they hoped to link by the vulnerabilities of statelessness alone. Thus, this book's fourth thesis: The FBI helped to define the twentieth-century Black Atlantic, both blocking and forcing its flows.Less
This part marshals the largely uncompiled evidence of FBI author files to suggest that the worst suspicions about the stakeout of Paris noir were basically correct—that Wright was not too wrong, it follows, when he darkly joked that any African American “who is not paranoid is in serious shape,” at least if he or she sought literary license outside the United States during the Hoover era. Two decades before American involvement in World War II opened the floodgates of black Paris, the FBI began to influence the movements of expatriate Afro-modernists—this even as it manipulated “lit.-cop federalism” to nationalize itself in the mind of white America. In the French capital of black transnationalism, and satellites beyond, FBI agents and informers kept tabs on a network of black literary travelers they hoped to link by the vulnerabilities of statelessness alone. Thus, this book's fourth thesis: The FBI helped to define the twentieth-century Black Atlantic, both blocking and forcing its flows.
William J. Maxwell
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691130200
- eISBN:
- 9781400852062
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691130200.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This part aims to add depth and detail to less-familiar portraits of Hoover as a young militant, and to establish the character of the also young law enforcement agency he joined in the wake of World ...
More
This part aims to add depth and detail to less-familiar portraits of Hoover as a young militant, and to establish the character of the also young law enforcement agency he joined in the wake of World War I. Explaining why Hoover and the Bureau began to pursue African American writing, it presents the first of five theses: namely, The birth of the Bureau, coupled with the birth of J. Edgar Hoover, ensured the FBI's attention to African American literature. Section 1 recounts how the pre-Hoover Bureau emerged amid the social divisions of early twentieth-century America, and how it cultivated both literary publicity and public anti-New Negroism to whet an undivided national appetite for federal policing. Section 2 examines how the pre-Bureau Hoover managed his surprising familiarity with Afro-America. Section 3 establishes that with Hoover's hiring by the Bureau during the first Red Scare and the dawn of Harlem's cultural rebirth, the FBI's racial and literary preoccupations only deepened. Under Hoover's watch, the earliest Harlem Renaissance writing became the common passion of Bureau anti-New Negroism and “lit.-cop federalism,” the latter defined as the effort to inject a compelling federal police presence into the U.S. print public sphere.Less
This part aims to add depth and detail to less-familiar portraits of Hoover as a young militant, and to establish the character of the also young law enforcement agency he joined in the wake of World War I. Explaining why Hoover and the Bureau began to pursue African American writing, it presents the first of five theses: namely, The birth of the Bureau, coupled with the birth of J. Edgar Hoover, ensured the FBI's attention to African American literature. Section 1 recounts how the pre-Hoover Bureau emerged amid the social divisions of early twentieth-century America, and how it cultivated both literary publicity and public anti-New Negroism to whet an undivided national appetite for federal policing. Section 2 examines how the pre-Bureau Hoover managed his surprising familiarity with Afro-America. Section 3 establishes that with Hoover's hiring by the Bureau during the first Red Scare and the dawn of Harlem's cultural rebirth, the FBI's racial and literary preoccupations only deepened. Under Hoover's watch, the earliest Harlem Renaissance writing became the common passion of Bureau anti-New Negroism and “lit.-cop federalism,” the latter defined as the effort to inject a compelling federal police presence into the U.S. print public sphere.
William J. Maxwell
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691130200
- eISBN:
- 9781400852062
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691130200.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This introductory chapter first discusses the FBI's surveillance African American writers and imitation of black prose as part of its struggle against African American protest. It argues that unlike ...
More
This introductory chapter first discusses the FBI's surveillance African American writers and imitation of black prose as part of its struggle against African American protest. It argues that unlike nearly every other institution of U.S. literary study, prone to showing interest only during well-promoted black renaissances, the Bureau rarely took its eyes off the latest in African American writing between 1919 and 1972. And during this more-than-fifty-year period, the whole of its Hoover era, it never dismissed this writing as an impractical vogue relevant only to blacks (or to bleeding-heart white “Negrotarians,” for that matter). Relying on dueling public documents of African American literature and FBI literary commentary, the book helps establish their surprising depth of contact between spy-critics and black Bureau writers. An overview of the four parts of the book is also presented.Less
This introductory chapter first discusses the FBI's surveillance African American writers and imitation of black prose as part of its struggle against African American protest. It argues that unlike nearly every other institution of U.S. literary study, prone to showing interest only during well-promoted black renaissances, the Bureau rarely took its eyes off the latest in African American writing between 1919 and 1972. And during this more-than-fifty-year period, the whole of its Hoover era, it never dismissed this writing as an impractical vogue relevant only to blacks (or to bleeding-heart white “Negrotarians,” for that matter). Relying on dueling public documents of African American literature and FBI literary commentary, the book helps establish their surprising depth of contact between spy-critics and black Bureau writers. An overview of the four parts of the book is also presented.
William J. Maxwell
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691130200
- eISBN:
- 9781400852062
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691130200.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Few institutions seem more opposed than African American literature and J. Edgar Hoover's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). But behind the scenes, the FBI's hostility to black protest was ...
More
Few institutions seem more opposed than African American literature and J. Edgar Hoover's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). But behind the scenes, the FBI's hostility to black protest was energized by fear of and respect for black writing. Drawing on nearly 14,000 pages of newly released FBI files, this book exposes the Bureau's intimate policing of five decades of African American poems, plays, essays, and novels. Starting in 1919, year one of Harlem's renaissance and Hoover's career at the Bureau, secretive FBI “ghostreaders” monitored the latest developments in African American letters. By the time of Hoover's death in 1972, these ghostreaders knew enough to simulate a sinister black literature of their own. The official aim behind the Bureau 's close reading was to anticipate political unrest. Yet, as this book reveals, FBI surveillance came to influence the creation and public reception of African American literature in the heart of the twentieth century. This book details how the FBI threatened the international travels of African American writers and prepared to jail dozens of them in times of national emergency. All the same, it shows that the Bureau's paranoid style could prompt insightful criticism from Hoover's ghostreaders and creative replies from their literary targets. For authors such as Claude McKay, James Baldwin, and Sonia Sanchez, the suspicion that government spy-critics tracked their every word inspired rewarding stylistic experiments as well as disabling self-censorship. Illuminating both the serious harms of state surveillance and the ways in which imaginative writing can withstand and exploit it, this book is a groundbreaking account of a long-hidden dimension of African American literature.Less
Few institutions seem more opposed than African American literature and J. Edgar Hoover's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). But behind the scenes, the FBI's hostility to black protest was energized by fear of and respect for black writing. Drawing on nearly 14,000 pages of newly released FBI files, this book exposes the Bureau's intimate policing of five decades of African American poems, plays, essays, and novels. Starting in 1919, year one of Harlem's renaissance and Hoover's career at the Bureau, secretive FBI “ghostreaders” monitored the latest developments in African American letters. By the time of Hoover's death in 1972, these ghostreaders knew enough to simulate a sinister black literature of their own. The official aim behind the Bureau 's close reading was to anticipate political unrest. Yet, as this book reveals, FBI surveillance came to influence the creation and public reception of African American literature in the heart of the twentieth century. This book details how the FBI threatened the international travels of African American writers and prepared to jail dozens of them in times of national emergency. All the same, it shows that the Bureau's paranoid style could prompt insightful criticism from Hoover's ghostreaders and creative replies from their literary targets. For authors such as Claude McKay, James Baldwin, and Sonia Sanchez, the suspicion that government spy-critics tracked their every word inspired rewarding stylistic experiments as well as disabling self-censorship. Illuminating both the serious harms of state surveillance and the ways in which imaginative writing can withstand and exploit it, this book is a groundbreaking account of a long-hidden dimension of African American literature.
Joanna Brooks
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195332919
- eISBN:
- 9780199851263
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195332919.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This introductory chapter sets out the purpose of the book, which is to reconstruct the founding moments of African American and Native American literatures. These American literary traditions ...
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This introductory chapter sets out the purpose of the book, which is to reconstruct the founding moments of African American and Native American literatures. These American literary traditions emerged during the era of the American Revolution, when blacks and Indians faced not only the crushing legacies of slavery and colonization but also the chaos of war, epidemic, resettlement, exile, and the political uncertainties of the new nation. It seeks to advance our understanding of how race was lived and how racial identities were formed in 18th-century America. It shows how the earliest African American and Native American authors used religion and literature as instruments for transforming the meaning of race. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.Less
This introductory chapter sets out the purpose of the book, which is to reconstruct the founding moments of African American and Native American literatures. These American literary traditions emerged during the era of the American Revolution, when blacks and Indians faced not only the crushing legacies of slavery and colonization but also the chaos of war, epidemic, resettlement, exile, and the political uncertainties of the new nation. It seeks to advance our understanding of how race was lived and how racial identities were formed in 18th-century America. It shows how the earliest African American and Native American authors used religion and literature as instruments for transforming the meaning of race. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.
Steven Belletto
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199826889
- eISBN:
- 9780199932382
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199826889.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
Beginning with a discussion of Colson Whitehead’s more recent novel The Intuitionist (1999), chapter four covers a range of works, from the most influential African-American novels of mid-century, ...
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Beginning with a discussion of Colson Whitehead’s more recent novel The Intuitionist (1999), chapter four covers a range of works, from the most influential African-American novels of mid-century, Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952), to less frequently discussed works such as Wright’s own second novel, The Outsider (1953), and John A. Williams’ The Man Who Cried I Am! (1967). The chapter demonstrates how African Americans writers dramatized a sense of being caught between the competing systems of control represented by Communism on the one hand, and the promise of American democratic freedom on the other. Tracing an arc from Native Son to The Man Who Cried I Am!, the chapter demonstrates the ever-changing relationship between the individual and political rhetoric by showing how the denial of chance was first attributed to Communists, who in Invisible Man simply want to control African Americans for their own purposes, and then moves finally The Man Who Cried I Am!, which shows that, from a black perspective, American democracy masks a fantasy of complete control.Less
Beginning with a discussion of Colson Whitehead’s more recent novel The Intuitionist (1999), chapter four covers a range of works, from the most influential African-American novels of mid-century, Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952), to less frequently discussed works such as Wright’s own second novel, The Outsider (1953), and John A. Williams’ The Man Who Cried I Am! (1967). The chapter demonstrates how African Americans writers dramatized a sense of being caught between the competing systems of control represented by Communism on the one hand, and the promise of American democratic freedom on the other. Tracing an arc from Native Son to The Man Who Cried I Am!, the chapter demonstrates the ever-changing relationship between the individual and political rhetoric by showing how the denial of chance was first attributed to Communists, who in Invisible Man simply want to control African Americans for their own purposes, and then moves finally The Man Who Cried I Am!, which shows that, from a black perspective, American democracy masks a fantasy of complete control.
Farah Jasmine Griffin
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195088960
- eISBN:
- 9780199855148
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195088960.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This book is the first sustained study of migration as it is portrayed in African American literature, letters, music, and painting. It identifies the “migration narrative” as a dominant African ...
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This book is the first sustained study of migration as it is portrayed in African American literature, letters, music, and painting. It identifies the “migration narrative” as a dominant African American cultural tradition. Covering a period from 1923 to 1992, the book provides close readings of novels, autobiographies, songs, poetry, and painting; in so doing it carves out a framework that allows for a more inclusive reading of African American cultural forms.Less
This book is the first sustained study of migration as it is portrayed in African American literature, letters, music, and painting. It identifies the “migration narrative” as a dominant African American cultural tradition. Covering a period from 1923 to 1992, the book provides close readings of novels, autobiographies, songs, poetry, and painting; in so doing it carves out a framework that allows for a more inclusive reading of African American cultural forms.
Nicole N. Aljoe, Eric Gardner, and Molly O’Hagan Hardy
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780252042232
- eISBN:
- 9780252050978
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042232.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Nicole J. Aljoe, Eric Gardner, and Molly O’Hagan Hardy describe the development of Just Teach One Early African American Print and its focus on texts excluded from critical and historical narratives ...
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Nicole J. Aljoe, Eric Gardner, and Molly O’Hagan Hardy describe the development of Just Teach One Early African American Print and its focus on texts excluded from critical and historical narratives of black literature. The chapter describes JTO: EAAP’s plans to link its work with other DH projects like the Early Caribbean Digital Archive and the Colored Conventions Project, and to build bridges to lesser-known collections, including historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and church collections, in order to aid text sharing, identification, preservation, and technological engagement. Recognizing its responsibility to preserve black cultural heritage, the essay describes JTO: EAAP’s decision to use TEI standards to encode texts on the site and provides an extended example from Aljoe’s classroom project on “Theresa: A Haytien Tale.”Less
Nicole J. Aljoe, Eric Gardner, and Molly O’Hagan Hardy describe the development of Just Teach One Early African American Print and its focus on texts excluded from critical and historical narratives of black literature. The chapter describes JTO: EAAP’s plans to link its work with other DH projects like the Early Caribbean Digital Archive and the Colored Conventions Project, and to build bridges to lesser-known collections, including historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and church collections, in order to aid text sharing, identification, preservation, and technological engagement. Recognizing its responsibility to preserve black cultural heritage, the essay describes JTO: EAAP’s decision to use TEI standards to encode texts on the site and provides an extended example from Aljoe’s classroom project on “Theresa: A Haytien Tale.”
Tisha M. Brooks
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780252042232
- eISBN:
- 9780252050978
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042232.003.0015
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Tisha Brooks writes about a digital anthology assignment in her 200-level African American literature survey in which students act as “knowledge curators.” Brooks’s assignments use literary and ...
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Tisha Brooks writes about a digital anthology assignment in her 200-level African American literature survey in which students act as “knowledge curators.” Brooks’s assignments use literary and visual texts to “bridge multiple literacies and historical gaps,” and to encourage students to think critically about representations of violence against black bodies. Student work culminates in a group digital anthology project that helps them “move from mere consumers of knowledge to critical thinkers who use the archive to make meaning of its artifacts and the history and literature connected to them.” By selecting multimedia artifacts across periods, students become adept at representing the historical continuities between past and present.Less
Tisha Brooks writes about a digital anthology assignment in her 200-level African American literature survey in which students act as “knowledge curators.” Brooks’s assignments use literary and visual texts to “bridge multiple literacies and historical gaps,” and to encourage students to think critically about representations of violence against black bodies. Student work culminates in a group digital anthology project that helps them “move from mere consumers of knowledge to critical thinkers who use the archive to make meaning of its artifacts and the history and literature connected to them.” By selecting multimedia artifacts across periods, students become adept at representing the historical continuities between past and present.
Gene Andrew Jarrett
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814743386
- eISBN:
- 9780814743874
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814743386.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter explores politics in literature, interpreting New Negro politics as a paradigm. New Negro politics accounts for a cultural formation that sought to overcome the prevailing theme that ...
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This chapter explores politics in literature, interpreting New Negro politics as a paradigm. New Negro politics accounts for a cultural formation that sought to overcome the prevailing theme that African Americans were inferior and unassimilable in American “civilization.” It also sought to prove that African Americans, then described as a race, could be uplifted in moral, educational and cultural ways. Indeed, African American intellectuals used literature to explain or critique racial uplift and its cultural implementation as political action. Focusing on criticism and function, the chapter shows that the correlation between African American communities and racial-uplift ideology had translated into special rhetorical, aesthetic, and thematic features constituting the political tradition of African American literature at the turn into the twentieth century.Less
This chapter explores politics in literature, interpreting New Negro politics as a paradigm. New Negro politics accounts for a cultural formation that sought to overcome the prevailing theme that African Americans were inferior and unassimilable in American “civilization.” It also sought to prove that African Americans, then described as a race, could be uplifted in moral, educational and cultural ways. Indeed, African American intellectuals used literature to explain or critique racial uplift and its cultural implementation as political action. Focusing on criticism and function, the chapter shows that the correlation between African American communities and racial-uplift ideology had translated into special rhetorical, aesthetic, and thematic features constituting the political tradition of African American literature at the turn into the twentieth century.
Gene Andrew Jarrett
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814743386
- eISBN:
- 9780814743874
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814743386.003.0008
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the political value of African American literature through an examination of Thomas Jefferson and Barack Obama. Prior to their careers as elected ...
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This introductory chapter provides an overview of the political value of African American literature through an examination of Thomas Jefferson and Barack Obama. Prior to their careers as elected officials, both men wrote books that had been influential in shaping public opinion on the nation's democratic potential as well as on their own personal, political, and presidential qualifications. In 1776, Jefferson coauthored the Declaration of Independence, and in 1787, he published an authoritative ethnography of early America. Meanwhile, Obama released three bestselling books of autobiographical nonfiction and public policy. Evidently, African American literature fueled their political imaginations. Thus, this book looks at African American literature's role in political imagination and political action—to the extent that it can facilitate social change—and political action's role in the African American literary imagination.Less
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the political value of African American literature through an examination of Thomas Jefferson and Barack Obama. Prior to their careers as elected officials, both men wrote books that had been influential in shaping public opinion on the nation's democratic potential as well as on their own personal, political, and presidential qualifications. In 1776, Jefferson coauthored the Declaration of Independence, and in 1787, he published an authoritative ethnography of early America. Meanwhile, Obama released three bestselling books of autobiographical nonfiction and public policy. Evidently, African American literature fueled their political imaginations. Thus, this book looks at African American literature's role in political imagination and political action—to the extent that it can facilitate social change—and political action's role in the African American literary imagination.
Anissa Janine Wardi
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813037455
- eISBN:
- 9780813042343
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813037455.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This book contributes to the fields of African American, ecocritical, and literary studies, as it offers a sustained treatise on watercourses in the African American expressive tradition. It builds ...
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This book contributes to the fields of African American, ecocritical, and literary studies, as it offers a sustained treatise on watercourses in the African American expressive tradition. It builds on the scholarship on the trans-Atlantic voyage, specifically reading the Middle Passage as a trope in African diasporic writing, and expanding studies of the Atlantic by reading this seminal water crossing in relation to other bodies of water. The African American expressive tradition positions bodies of water as haunted by the bodies of those who lost their lives in their currents. Water, then, the course of travel, marks severed paths to home, family, land, and even life, yet this break in the waters inaugurated a transatlantic culture. In this way, water is not merely the site of disconnection, trauma, and loss, but a source of new life. Further, while ecocritical theory is gaining increasing importance, to date there has been very little analysis of the environmental dimension of African American writing. The inclusion of African American literature in this field—and specifically reading water as a site of memory and history—meaningfully expands the ecocritical canon. Beyond proposing a new theoretical map for conceptualizing the African Diaspora and considering the ways in which collective memory is grafted onto waterways, this study offers a series of close readings of major African American literary, filmic, and blues texts.Less
This book contributes to the fields of African American, ecocritical, and literary studies, as it offers a sustained treatise on watercourses in the African American expressive tradition. It builds on the scholarship on the trans-Atlantic voyage, specifically reading the Middle Passage as a trope in African diasporic writing, and expanding studies of the Atlantic by reading this seminal water crossing in relation to other bodies of water. The African American expressive tradition positions bodies of water as haunted by the bodies of those who lost their lives in their currents. Water, then, the course of travel, marks severed paths to home, family, land, and even life, yet this break in the waters inaugurated a transatlantic culture. In this way, water is not merely the site of disconnection, trauma, and loss, but a source of new life. Further, while ecocritical theory is gaining increasing importance, to date there has been very little analysis of the environmental dimension of African American writing. The inclusion of African American literature in this field—and specifically reading water as a site of memory and history—meaningfully expands the ecocritical canon. Beyond proposing a new theoretical map for conceptualizing the African Diaspora and considering the ways in which collective memory is grafted onto waterways, this study offers a series of close readings of major African American literary, filmic, and blues texts.
Katy L. Chiles
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199313501
- eISBN:
- 9780199350728
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199313501.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 18th Century and Early American Literature
Racial thought at the close of the eighteenth century differed radically from that of the nineteenth century, when the concept of race as a fixed biological category would emerge. Instead, many early ...
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Racial thought at the close of the eighteenth century differed radically from that of the nineteenth century, when the concept of race as a fixed biological category would emerge. Instead, many early Americans thought that race was an exterior bodily trait, incrementally produced by environmental factors, and continuously subject to change. While historians have documented aspects of eighteenth-century racial thought, Transformable Race is the first scholarly book that identifies how this thinking informs the figurative language in the literature of this crucial period. It argues that the notion of transformable race structured how early American texts portrayed the formation of racial identities. Examining figures such as Phillis Wheatley, Benjamin Franklin, Samson Occom, and Charles Brockden Brown, Transformable Race demonstrates how these authors used language emphasizing or questioning the potential malleability of physical features to explore the construction of racial categories. For early American studies, this project replaces prevailing critical race frameworks particular to later periods with one more fitting for early America. In critical race studies, this book illuminates how in this early literature identities take form through one’s potential to transform from one race into another. Transformable Race posits a historically specific, transformational model of critical race theory that refigures our understanding of racialization in early American literature and, in turn, offers critical race studies a new way of understanding racial formation.Less
Racial thought at the close of the eighteenth century differed radically from that of the nineteenth century, when the concept of race as a fixed biological category would emerge. Instead, many early Americans thought that race was an exterior bodily trait, incrementally produced by environmental factors, and continuously subject to change. While historians have documented aspects of eighteenth-century racial thought, Transformable Race is the first scholarly book that identifies how this thinking informs the figurative language in the literature of this crucial period. It argues that the notion of transformable race structured how early American texts portrayed the formation of racial identities. Examining figures such as Phillis Wheatley, Benjamin Franklin, Samson Occom, and Charles Brockden Brown, Transformable Race demonstrates how these authors used language emphasizing or questioning the potential malleability of physical features to explore the construction of racial categories. For early American studies, this project replaces prevailing critical race frameworks particular to later periods with one more fitting for early America. In critical race studies, this book illuminates how in this early literature identities take form through one’s potential to transform from one race into another. Transformable Race posits a historically specific, transformational model of critical race theory that refigures our understanding of racialization in early American literature and, in turn, offers critical race studies a new way of understanding racial formation.
Madhu Dubey
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226167268
- eISBN:
- 9780226167282
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226167282.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This chapter spells out what exactly it means to speak of a postmodern moment in African–American studies. Selectively examining key texts from various disciplines, it sketches the lineaments of a ...
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This chapter spells out what exactly it means to speak of a postmodern moment in African–American studies. Selectively examining key texts from various disciplines, it sketches the lineaments of a widely registered crisis in the idea of black community and specifies the problems of racial representation sparked by this crisis. To distinguish postmodern from modern projects of racial representation, it looks closely at exemplary efforts to forge new forms of community suited to the changed realities of the post-Civil Rights period. These entail a shift from uplift to populist and from print to vernacular paradigms of black intellectual work. It is argued that even as they stress their critical distance from previous models of black community, postmodern cultural critics find it difficult to legitimize their own claims to racial representation without reanimating the cultural politics of 1960s black nationalism. In the domain of print literature, antirealism and textual self-reflection are generally identified as the unique elements of postmodern black fiction and said to disable essentialist constructs of black culture and community. Such assumptions are disputed through a comparative analysis of Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo and John Edgar Wideman's Reuben. In their common effort to incarnate the black urban writer in the image of Thoth, Egyptian god of writing, these novels explicitly engage the difficulties of resolving postmodern problems of racial representation through the medium of print literature.Less
This chapter spells out what exactly it means to speak of a postmodern moment in African–American studies. Selectively examining key texts from various disciplines, it sketches the lineaments of a widely registered crisis in the idea of black community and specifies the problems of racial representation sparked by this crisis. To distinguish postmodern from modern projects of racial representation, it looks closely at exemplary efforts to forge new forms of community suited to the changed realities of the post-Civil Rights period. These entail a shift from uplift to populist and from print to vernacular paradigms of black intellectual work. It is argued that even as they stress their critical distance from previous models of black community, postmodern cultural critics find it difficult to legitimize their own claims to racial representation without reanimating the cultural politics of 1960s black nationalism. In the domain of print literature, antirealism and textual self-reflection are generally identified as the unique elements of postmodern black fiction and said to disable essentialist constructs of black culture and community. Such assumptions are disputed through a comparative analysis of Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo and John Edgar Wideman's Reuben. In their common effort to incarnate the black urban writer in the image of Thoth, Egyptian god of writing, these novels explicitly engage the difficulties of resolving postmodern problems of racial representation through the medium of print literature.
Jodi Eichler-Levine
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814722992
- eISBN:
- 9780814724002
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814722992.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter examines the logic underlying most of the Jewish and African American children's literature discussed in this book. It begins with a brief introduction to the histories of Jewish and ...
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This chapter examines the logic underlying most of the Jewish and African American children's literature discussed in this book. It begins with a brief introduction to the histories of Jewish and African American children's books before moving to readings that show how democratic rhetoric allowed both Jewish Americans and African Americans to harness juvenile materials as a chief means of demonstrating patriotism and respectable religiosity. The discussion is organized around three periods that are crucial to commemorations of Jewish and African American identities: the colonial era, World War I, and the civil rights movement. These examples of military action and activism demonstrate how minorities, through their willingness to sacrifice their own lives for others, remember their way into civic membership. In this sense, voluntarism becomes the primary way to sign one's belonging.Less
This chapter examines the logic underlying most of the Jewish and African American children's literature discussed in this book. It begins with a brief introduction to the histories of Jewish and African American children's books before moving to readings that show how democratic rhetoric allowed both Jewish Americans and African Americans to harness juvenile materials as a chief means of demonstrating patriotism and respectable religiosity. The discussion is organized around three periods that are crucial to commemorations of Jewish and African American identities: the colonial era, World War I, and the civil rights movement. These examples of military action and activism demonstrate how minorities, through their willingness to sacrifice their own lives for others, remember their way into civic membership. In this sense, voluntarism becomes the primary way to sign one's belonging.
Shirley Moody-Turner
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617038853
- eISBN:
- 9781621039785
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617038853.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Folk Literature
The introduction details an alternative genealogy through which to approach both African American folklore studies and African American literary engagements with black folklore in the ...
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The introduction details an alternative genealogy through which to approach both African American folklore studies and African American literary engagements with black folklore in the post-reconstruction period, centering African Americans as active participants, rather than merely passive repositories, in the study and representation of black folklore. It proposes a corrective to both the discipline of folklore studies and a new lens through which to read representation of folklore in African American literature. In particular, the introduction shows how developments in folklore studies were inseparable from turn-of-the-century constructions of race.Less
The introduction details an alternative genealogy through which to approach both African American folklore studies and African American literary engagements with black folklore in the post-reconstruction period, centering African Americans as active participants, rather than merely passive repositories, in the study and representation of black folklore. It proposes a corrective to both the discipline of folklore studies and a new lens through which to read representation of folklore in African American literature. In particular, the introduction shows how developments in folklore studies were inseparable from turn-of-the-century constructions of race.
Gene Andrew Jarrett
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814743386
- eISBN:
- 9780814743874
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814743386.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter focuses on the 2001 case SunTrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin Company, a case which debated and determined the transformative potential of African American literature in the realm of social ...
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This chapter focuses on the 2001 case SunTrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin Company, a case which debated and determined the transformative potential of African American literature in the realm of social change. As the exclusive copyright owner of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind (1936), the Stephen Mitchell Trust filed a complaint against Houghton Mifflin's publication of its parody—Alice Randall's The Wind Done Gone. Consequently, the case led to a canonical redefinition of political parody, a jurisprudential reconsideration of preliminary injunctions, and a general understanding of how laws uphold political rights. As authors of literary parody have contested the accusation of copyright infringement by asserting their own right to political speech, they have helped to combat the legal affront to literary freedom.Less
This chapter focuses on the 2001 case SunTrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin Company, a case which debated and determined the transformative potential of African American literature in the realm of social change. As the exclusive copyright owner of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind (1936), the Stephen Mitchell Trust filed a complaint against Houghton Mifflin's publication of its parody—Alice Randall's The Wind Done Gone. Consequently, the case led to a canonical redefinition of political parody, a jurisprudential reconsideration of preliminary injunctions, and a general understanding of how laws uphold political rights. As authors of literary parody have contested the accusation of copyright infringement by asserting their own right to political speech, they have helped to combat the legal affront to literary freedom.
