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

This study 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 (University of Iowa) Hill, HILL LENA
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.12.2017
• EAN: 9781316639276
• ISBN: 978-1-316-63927-6
• No. of pages: 293
• Series: Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture; Cambridge Studies in American; Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General, Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900, United States of America, USA, Literary studies: general, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Literature: history and criticism, Black & Asian Studies