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Traces the life and literary career of Zora Neal Hurston.
The Dialect of Modernism uncovers the crucial role of racial masquerade and linguistic imitation in the emergence of literary modernism. Rebelling against the standard language, and literature written in it, modernists, such as Joseph Conrad, Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and William Carlos Williams reimagined themselves as racial aliens and mimicked the strategies of dialect speakers in their work. In doing so, they made possible the most radical representational strategies of modern literature, which emerged from their attack on the privilege of standard language. At the same time, however, another movement, identified with Harlem, was struggling to free itself from the very dial...
Traces the career of the influential African-American writer, citing the historical backdrop of her life and work while considering her relationships with and influences on top literary, intellectual, and artistic figures.
Sitting atop Mount Oread, the University of Kansas stands as a monument to the determination of the state's earliest settlers to build for the future. As a "city on a hill," the university has also mirrored both American society's hopes and its fears—and never has this been truer than over the past five decades. Transforming the University of Kansas chronicles the many accomplishments and the daunting challenges that marked the last half-century at the University. On the eve of the sesquicentennial anniversary of the school's founding, this book reflects upon the people, politics, and developments that have transformed KU since 1965, making it the distinctive institution of higher learning...
An indispensable introduction to the study of autobiography as well as a historical overview of autobiographical writing from St Augustine to the present day.
The figure of the zombie is a familiar one in world culture, acting as a metaphor for "the other," a participant in narratives of life and death, good and evil, and of a fate worse than death--the state of being "undead." This book explores the phenomenon from its roots in Haitian folklore to its evolution on the silver screen and to its radical transformation during the 1960s countercultural revolution. Contributors from a broad range of disciplines here examine the zombie and its relationship to colonialism, orientalism, racism, globalism, capitalism and more--including potential signs that the zombie hordes may have finally achieved oversaturation. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.
For a decade and a half, since she first appeared in the Birmingham Centre’s collective volume The Empire Strikes Back, Hazel Carby has been on the frontline of the debate over multicultural education in Britain and the US. This book brings together her most important and influential essays, ranging over such topics as the necessity for racially diverse school curricula, the construction of literary canons, Zora Neale Hurston’s portraits of “the Folk,” C.L.R. James and Trinidadian nationalism and black women blues artists, and the necessity for racially diverse school curricula. Carby’s analyses of diverse aspects of contemporary culture are invariably sharp and provocative, her political insights shrewd and often against the grain. A powerful intervention, Culture in Babylon will become a standard reference point in future debates over race, ethnicity and gender.
A child's descent into madness was explored in Eye.
Since the colonial days, American women have traveled, migrated, and relocated, always faced with the challenge of reconstructing their homes for themselves and their families. Women, America, and Movement offers a journey through largely unexplored territory--the experiences of migrating American women. These narratives, both real and imagined, represent a range of personal and critical perspectives; some of the women describe their travels as expansive and freeing, while others relate the dreadful costs and sacrifices of relocating. Despite the range of essays featured in this study, the writings all coalesce around the issues of politics, poetry, and self- identity described by Adrienne R...
Wallace Thurman (1902-1934) played a pivotal role in creating and defining the Harlem Renaissance. Thurman's complicated life as a black writer is described here for the first time: from his birth in Salt Lake City, Utah; through his quixotic and spotty education; to his arrival and residence in New York City at the height of the New Negro Movement in Harlem. Seen as it often is through the life of Langston Hughes, the Harlem Renaissance is celebrated as a highly successful Afro-centrist achievement. Seen from Thurman's perspective, as set against the historical and cultural background of the Jazz Age, the accomplishments of the Harlem Renaissance appear more qualified and more equivocal. In Thurman's view the Harlem Renaissance's failure to live up to its initial promise resulted from an ideological underpinning which was overwhelmingly concerned with race. He felt that the movement's self-consciousness and faddism compromised the aesthetic standards of many of its writers and artists, including his own.