Mixed Race Studies

Approaches to Teaching the Novels of Nella Larsen

Modern Language Association
2016-09-01
2010 pages
6 x 0.7 x 9.1 inches
Hardcover ISBN: 9781603292191
Paperback ISBN: 9781603292207

Edited by:

Jacquelyn Y. McLendon, Professor Emerita of English & Africana Studies; Director Emerita of Black Studies
College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia

Nella Larsen’s novels Quicksand and Passing, published at the height of the Harlem Renaissance, fell out of print and were thus little known for many years. Now widely available and taught, Quicksand and Passing challenge conventional “tragic mulatta” and “passing” narratives. In part 1, “Materials,” of Approaches to Teaching the Novels of Nella Larsen, the editor surveys the canon of Larsen’s writing, evaluates editions of her works, recommends secondary readings, and compiles a list of useful multimedia resources for teaching.

The essays in part 2, “Approaches,” aim to help students better understand attitudes toward women and race during the Harlem Renaissance, the novels’ relations to other artistic movements, and legal debates over racial identities in the early twentieth century. In so doing, contributors demonstrate how new and seasoned instructors alike might use Larsen’s novels to explore a wide range of topics—including Larsen’s short stories and letters, the relation between her writings and her biography, and the novels’ discussion of gender and sexuality.

Contents

• Acknowledgments
• PART ONE: MATERIALS / Jacquelyn Y. McLendon
• PART TWO: APPROACHES
  • Introduction / Jacquelyn Y. McLendon
  • Historical and Cultural Contexts
    • Nella Larsen’s Passing and the Literary and Legal Context of the Passing Narrative / Martha J. Cutter
    • Nella Larsen’s Modernism / Caresse John
    • Helga Crane in West Egg: Reading Quicksand and The Great Gatsby as a Case Study in Canonicity / Shealeen Meaney
    • “A Whole World of Experience and Struggle”: Teaching Literature as Cultural and Intellectual Women’s History / Lyde Sizer
    • Nightlife and Racial Learning in Quicksand / Clark Barwick
  • Fiction and the Arts
    • Sounding and Being: A Resource for Teaching Musical References and Symbolism in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand / Gayle Murchison
    • Nella Larsen and the Racial Mountain: Teaching Black Musical Aesthetics in Passing and Quicksand / Lori Harrison-Kahan
    • Nella Larsen and the Civilization of Images: Teaching Primitivism and Expressionism in Quicksand / Cristina Giorcelli
  • Identity
    • “Anything Might Happen”: Freedom and American Identity in Nella Larsen’s Passing / Beryl Satter
    • Teaching Passing as a Lesbian Text / Suzanne Raitt
    • Approaching Gender in Quicksand / Beth Widmaier Capo
    • From “My Old Man” to Race Men in Quicksand / Riché Richardson
  • In the Classroom: Methods, Courses, Settings
    • The Matter of Beginnings: Teaching the Opening Paragraphs in Quicksand and Passing / Steven B. Shively
    • Versions of Passing / John K. Young
    • The Uses of Biography / George B. Hutchinson
    • “In Some . . . Determined Way a Little Flaunting”: Teaching with Nella Larsen’s Letters / M. Giulia Fabi and Jacquelyn Y. McLendon
    • Teaching Quicksand in Denmark / Martyn Bone
    • Teaching Nella Larsen’s Passing at an Urban Community College / Zivah Perel Katz
• Notes on Contributors
• Survey Participants
• Works Cited
• Index

James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex–Colored Man: A Century Later (Session 529)

Modern Language Association
127th MLA Annual Convention
2012-01-05 through 2012-01-05
Washington State Convention Center
Seattle, Washingon

Program arranged by the Division on Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century American Literature

Presiding

Gene Andrew Jarrett, Associate Professor of English
Boston University

Speakers

1. “Music, Race, and Nation in Johnson’s Autobiography”

Erich Nunn, Assistant Professor of English
Auburn University
 
2. “An Old Negro in a New Century: Locating the Southern Slave in Johnson’s Autobiography”

Adena Spingarn
Harvard University
 
3. “The Ex-Colored among Us: Johnson’s Autobiography and the New Millennial Multiracialism”

Michele Elam, Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor of English and Olivier Nomellini Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education
Stanford University

4. “Pragmatic Nationalism in Johnson’s Autobiography”

Michael Clay Hooper, Assistant Professor of English
Prairie View A&M University 

For more information, click here.

Jean Toomer and Politics (Session 465)

Modern Language Association
127th MLA Annual Convention
2012-01-05 through 2012-01-08
Washington State Convention Center
Seattle, Washington

A Special Session
Saturday, 2012-01-07, 12:00-13:15 PST (Local Time)
Room 6A, WSCC

Presiding:

Gino Pellegrini, Adjunct Assistant Professor of English
Pierce College, Woodland Hills, California

Speakers:

Barbara Clare Foley, Professor of English and American Studies
Rutgers University, Newark

Gino Pellegrini, Adjunct Assistant Professor of English
Pierce College, Woodland Hills, California

Charles Scruggs, Professor of English
University of Arizona

Belinda Wheeler, Assistant Professor of English
Paine  College, Augusta, Georgia

This roundtable will focus on the 2011 edition of Jean Toomer’s Cane, edited by Rudolph Byrd and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and in particular on the editors’ provocative new thesis that Toomer was a Negro who chose to pass for white. Presenters will confront, examine, and discuss Byrd and Gates’s thesis.

For more information, click here.