Visualizing Blackness and the Creation of the African American - Literary Traditio

Examines how African American writers use visual tropes as literary devices to challenge readers' conceptions of black identity.

List of contents

Introduction: the trope of the picture book; Part I. Sights of Instruction: 1. Witnessing moral authority in pre-abolition literature; 2. Picturing education and labor in Washington and Du Bois; 3. Gazing upon plastic art in the Harlem Renaissance; Part II. Lessons from the Museum: 4. Zora Neale Hurston: seeing by the rules of the Natural History Museum; 5. Melvin Tolson: gaining modernist perspective in the art gallery; 6. Ralph Ellison: engaging racial perception beyond museum walls; Coda: redefining the look of American character.

About the author

Lena Hill is Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Iowa. She is the co-author of Ralph Ellison's 'Invisible Man': A Reference Guide (2008). Her work has been published in journals such as American Literature and African American Review. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University, Connecticut.

Product details

• Authors: Lena Hill, Lena Michelle Hill
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 17.02.2014
• EAN: 9781107041585
• ISBN: 978-1-107-04158-5
• No. of pages: 287
• Series: Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture; Cambridge Studies in American
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies