Category: Literary/Artistic Criticism

  • Representations of multiracial Americans, especially those with one black and one white parent, appear everywhere in contemporary culture, from reality shows to presidential politics. Some depict multiracial individuals as being mired in painful confusion; others equate them with progress, as the embodiment of a postracial utopia. In “Transcending Blackness,” Ralina L. Joseph critiques both depictions…

  • (Miscege)nación en O Cortiço Trans: Revue de Littérature Générale et Comparée Issue 5 (2008) 10 pages (24 paragraphs) Brian L. Price, Assistant Professor of Spanish Wake Forest University Written a year after the proclamation of Brazilian independence, O Cortiço by Aluisio Azevedo depicts the demographic composition of the country with a naturalistic sense of detail…

  • There is no teasing apart what interracial couples think of themselves from what society shows them about themselves. Following on her earlier ground-breaking study of the social worlds of interracial couples, Erica Chito Childs considers the larger context of social messages, conveyed by the media, that inform how we think about love across the color…

  • Jean Toomer and the History of Passing Reviews in American History Volume 41, Number 1, March 2013 pages 113-121 DOI: 10.1353/rah.2013.0016 Matthew Pratt Guterl, Professor of Africana Studies and American Studies Brown University Jean Toomer. Cane. With a new afterword by Rudolph B. Byrd, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011.…

  • In “Mixed Bloods and Other Crosses,” Betsy Erkkilä argues that it is through the historical and psychological dramas of blood as a marker of violence, or race, or sex, or kinship that Americans have struggled over the meanings of democracy, citizenship, culture, national belonging, and the idea of America itself as it was constituted and…

  • 346-Comparative Ethnic Literatures (Reg. No. 22253) University of Buffalo, The State University of New York Spring 2013 Susan Muchshima Moynihan, Assistant Professor of English This course brings together Asian American and African American texts to destabilize our understandings of race; to situate racial formations in political and historical moments marked by the intersections of race,…

  • Barack Obama and the Contest for Identity through Self-Representation: HIST-UA 413 New York University Spring 2013 Jeffrey Sammons, Professor of History This course will explore the life and career path of the nation’s first “black” president through a focus on his two autobiographies, which will be studied for their content, style, and grounding in the…

  • Interracial Encounters: Reciprocal Representations in African and Asian American Literatures, 1896-1937 New York University Press October 2011 228 pages Hardcover ISBN: 9780814752555 Paper ISBN: 9780814752562 Julia H. Lee, Assistant Professor of English and Asian American Studies University of Texas, Austin 2013 Honorable Mention, Asian American Studies Association’s prize in Literary Studies Why do black characters…

  • Dividing Lines: Class Anxiety and Postbellum Black Fiction University of Michigan Press 2013 232 pages 6 x 9 Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-472-11861-8 Ebook ISBN: 978-0-472-02890-0 Andreá N. Williams, Associate Professor of English Ohio State University Photograph of John and Lugenia Burns Hope and family, undated, Atlanta University Photographs—Individuals, Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library (Pictured…

  • From the Golden Gate to the Green Mountains: A Hapa Educational Autobiography and Meta-Critical Reflection University of Vermont October 2012 65 pages Noelle Brassey A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Graduate College of The University of Vermont In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts Specializing in English…