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Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons™
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Articles 1 - 13 of 13
Full-Text Articles in Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority
Conspicuous Technique: Black Avant-Garde Poetry And The Politics Of Aesthetics, Ryan Gato
Conspicuous Technique: Black Avant-Garde Poetry And The Politics Of Aesthetics, Ryan Gato
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This study is comprised of two essays on the politics of aesthetics in postwar American black experimental poetry. Within the domain of contemporary poetry scholarship, this study serves three distinct yet interrelated purposes: 1.) to intervene within ongoing debates about the relation—or purported lack thereof—between black artistic practices and those of the historic and American avant-gardes by emphasizing the politics of aesthetics; 2.) to offer a critique of the usage of the discourses of postmodernism and of black aesthetics in the field by elucidating the historicity of their conceptual frameworks; and 3.) to provide an alternative to contemporary scholarship’s narrow …
Exploring Black Identity In Chester Himes’ Cotton Comes To Harlem, Jowan Williams, Matthew Carlson
Exploring Black Identity In Chester Himes’ Cotton Comes To Harlem, Jowan Williams, Matthew Carlson
Undergraduate Research (Journal)
Chester Himes’ 1965 novel, Cotton Comes to Harlem, is perhaps his most celebrated and renowned work. The novel is firmly rooted in the detective fiction genre; however, Himes loads the text with so many rich racial concepts that it also functions as a political piece. His characterization of the novel’s protagonists, Detectives Coffin Ed and Grave Digger, whose identities are trapped between being officers of the law and civilians of Harlem, highlights Himes’ personal identity struggles. Likewise, the text’s villains, Rev. Deke O’Malley and Colonel Robert Calhoun, play on the nostalgic question of black identity in America, which has ties …
When Communities Fall: A Critical Analysis Of Toni Morrison's Sula, Sami Saigh
When Communities Fall: A Critical Analysis Of Toni Morrison's Sula, Sami Saigh
Rushton Journal of Undergraduate Humanities Research
When women dare to self-actualize they frequently face barriers that tear their spirits down, leading to guilt, shame, and feelings of inadequacy. For the lineage of women in Toni Morrison’s Sula, these consequences are fatal for everyone. As these factors thwart fundamental social development, communal collapse becomes easier, leaving entire cultures vulnerable to erasure. Whether self-determination is expressed through promiscuity or properness, paradoxical moralism leaves no room for either. This essay explores how Morrison offers a retrospective look from the graveyard of a town while illustrating the impact of the loss of friends, lovers, and communities.
The Flow Of (Re)Memory In African American And Nubian Egyptian Literature: Morrison, Oddoul, And Mukhtar, Bushra Hashem
The Flow Of (Re)Memory In African American And Nubian Egyptian Literature: Morrison, Oddoul, And Mukhtar, Bushra Hashem
Theses and Dissertations
The purpose of this thesis is to define the term rememory, which Toni Morrison coins in her novel Beloved, and explore its interplay with water imagery in the novel and in two Nubian short stories, namely Haggag Oddoul’s “The River People” and Yahya Mukhtar’s “The Nile Bride.” The three narratives have core common features: they centralize water bodies as key sites of events, they depend heavily on the retelling of history and mythology, and they are told predominantly from the perspective of women. How do the writers weave rememory, history, and mythology to produce these narratives? Are they attempting to …
Representations Of Hustling Women: The Figure Of The Black Sex Worker In Ann Petry’S The Street And Louise Meriwether’S Daddy Was A Number Runner, Deborah L. Uzurin
Representations Of Hustling Women: The Figure Of The Black Sex Worker In Ann Petry’S The Street And Louise Meriwether’S Daddy Was A Number Runner, Deborah L. Uzurin
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This thesis provides a close reading of Ann Petry’s The Street (1946) and Louise Meriwether’s Daddy Was a Number Runner (1970) by analyzing how these two black women authors wrote about sex work and black women sex workers in their novels. Black women writers in the mid-twentieth century were reluctant to write about black women’s sexuality as a result of discourses of racial uplift that rejected the white supremacist stereotype of the hypersexual black woman. While not the focus of their novels, the inclusion of sex workers in their fictional narratives provide a complicated representation of a particular form of …
Creating New Suns: Early Examples Of Afrofuturist Literature, Makeba Lavan
Creating New Suns: Early Examples Of Afrofuturist Literature, Makeba Lavan
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Over the last twenty years, specifically with the summer 2002 issue of Social Text edited by Dr. Alondra Nelson, Afrofuturism has become a serious focus for academic inquiry. For people familiar with the term, Afrofuturism is presented as a movement borne of our contemporary moment. However, this dissertation explores the ways in which Afrofuturism is actually a cornerstone for both African American literature and the struggle for civil/human rights. I do this by exploring the following questions: How does the enslavement of African/ African Americans and its aftermath play out in early African American literature? How do African Americans writers …
Race, American Enlightenment, And The End Times, Mark A. Mattes
Race, American Enlightenment, And The End Times, Mark A. Mattes
Faculty and Staff Scholarship
This chapter examines eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century visions of apocalypse regarding the future of black lives in the American body politic. It begins with readings of Jefferson’s fear of a black planet in Notes on the State of Virginia and Crèvecoeur’s depictions of racial terror in Letters from an American Farmer. The chapter then investigates the writing of an African American herald of the end times, Christopher MacPherson. The chapter reads the apocalyptic jeremiad of MacPherson’s pamphlet, Christ’s Millennium (1811), as a reparative response to the suppression of black voices and the annihilation of black lives.
“I’Ve Known Rivers:” Representations Of The Mississippi River In African American Literature And Culture, Catherine Gooch
“I’Ve Known Rivers:” Representations Of The Mississippi River In African American Literature And Culture, Catherine Gooch
Theses and Dissertations--English
My dissertation, titled “I’ve Known Rivers”: Representations of the Mississippi River in African American Literature and Culture, uncovers the impact of the Mississippi River as a powerful, recurring geographical feature in twentieth-century African American literature that conveys the consequences of capitalist expansion on the individual and communal lives of Black Americans. Recent scholarship on the Mississippi River theorizes the relationship between capitalism, geography, and slavery. Walter Johnson’s River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom, Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton: A Global History, and Edward Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the …
Richard Wright's And Chester Himes's Treatment Of The Concept Of Emerging Black Masculinity In The 20th Century, Peter M. Brown
Richard Wright's And Chester Himes's Treatment Of The Concept Of Emerging Black Masculinity In The 20th Century, Peter M. Brown
Dissertations and Theses
No abstract provided.
Tobacco And Tar Babies: The Trickster As A Cultural Hero In Winnebago And African American Myth, Catherine Squibb
Tobacco And Tar Babies: The Trickster As A Cultural Hero In Winnebago And African American Myth, Catherine Squibb
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This thesis explores the trickster character through the lens of his role as a cultural hero. The two characters that I chose to examine are from North American myth, specifically Winnebago Hare and Brer Rabbit. These two characters represent the duality of the trickster while simultaneously embodying the lauded abilities of the hero. Through their actions these two characters shape culture through the very action of disrupting societal norms.
Chester Himes: Experiences Stirred His Thought And His Pen, Chanté Calais
Chester Himes: Experiences Stirred His Thought And His Pen, Chanté Calais
XULAneXUS
An effort to research the relationship between personal experience and the imaginative work of Chester Himes, this report explores the family life and experiences that fuel the apocalyptic theme of Himes‟ short story, “Prediction.” The confused and anxious feelings of the main character, alone in a small chamber containing the collection box of a Cathedral, parallels with the position of uncertainty in Chester Himes‟ own life. While black inferiority and white dominance are depicted throughout the pages of his short story, the underlying need for change is present as well. Just as Himes‟ character believes that the only solution for …
The Power Of Hoodoo: African Relic Symbolism In Amistad And The Narrative Of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Alicia M. Simmons
The Power Of Hoodoo: African Relic Symbolism In Amistad And The Narrative Of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Alicia M. Simmons
The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English
No abstract provided.
A Reader's Response To Go Tell It On The Mountain, Sally Higbee
A Reader's Response To Go Tell It On The Mountain, Sally Higbee
The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English
No abstract provided.