Companion to African American Literature

Gene Andrew Jarrett is Professor and Chair of the Department of English at Boston University.  He is the author of Representing the Race: A New Political History of African American Literature (2011) and Deans and Truants: Race and Realism in African American Literature (2007), and the editor or co-editor of several volumes and collections of African American literature and literary criticism.

A master archivist and historian of African American literature, Gene Jarrett has assembled a compelling new collection of essays for this necessary addition to the study of African American writing and thought. The volume offers a comprehensive survey of the African American canon, but also goes in new directions, giving fresh emphasis to the earliest writing of African Americans as well as to the exciting field of Latino/-a writing in the African Diaspora. This is a field-defining collection.”—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University“A Companion to African American Literature is a pathbreaking collection that will revolutionize the study of African American literature and literary culture. Written by leading established and emerging scholars in the field, the essays both provide a comprehensive overview of African American literary trends and preoccupations and challenge our conventional understanding of racial and national identities, literary genres, and intertextual influences. Accessible yet scholarly, this volume will be of enormous value to scholars, students, and general readers.”—Valerie Smith, Princeton University “Presenting a comprehensive overview of the field from the 20th cen-tury to the present, A Companion to African American Literature, ed. Gene Andrew Jarrett (Wiley-Blackwell), provides readers with a fairly comprehensive overview of one of America’s richest literary traditions.”  (American Literary Scholarship, 2012)

• Notes on Contributors viii Introduction 1Gene Andrew Jarrett Part I. The Literatures of Africa, Middle Passage, Slavery, and Freedom: The Early and Antebellum Periods, c.1750–1865 9 1. Back to the Future: Eighteenth-Century Transatlantic Black Authors 11Vincent Carretta 2. Africa in Early African American Literature 25James Sidbury 3. Ports of Call, Pulpits of Consultation: Rethinking the Origins of African American Literature 45Frances Smith FosterandKim D. Green 4. The Constitution of Toussaint: Another Origin of African American Literature 59Michael J. DrexlerandEd White 5. Religion in Early African American Literature 75Joanna BrooksandTyler Mabry 6. The Economies of the Slave Narrative 90Philip Gould 7. The 1850s: The First Renaissance of Black Letters 103Maurice S. Lee 8. African American Literary Nationalism 119Robert S. Levine 9. Periodicals, Print Culture, and African American Poetry 133Ivy G. Wilson Part II. New Negro Aesthetics, Culture, and Politics: The Modern Period, 1865–c.1940 149 10. Racial Uplift and the Literature of the New Negro 151Marlon B. Ross 11. The Dialect of New Negro Literature 169Gene Andrew Jarrett 12. African American Literary Realism, 1865–1914 185Andreá N. Williams 13. Folklore and African American Literature in the Post-Reconstruction Era 200Shirley Moody-Turner 14. The Harlem Renaissance: The New Negro at Home and Abroad 212Michelle Ann Stephens 15. Transatlantic Collaborations: Visual Culture in African American Literature 227Cherene Sherrard-Johnson 16. Aesthetic Hygiene: Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Work of Art 243Mark Christian Thompson 17. African American Modernism and State Surveillance 254William J. Maxwell Part III. Reforming the Canon, Tradition, and Criticism of African American Literature: The Contemporary Period, c.1940–Present 269 18. The Chicago Renaissance 271Michelle Yvonne Gordon 19. Jazz and African American Literature 286Keith D. Leonard 20. The Black Arts Movement 302James Edward Smethurst 21. Humor in African American Literature 315Glenda R. Carpio 22. Neo-Slave Narratives 332Madhu Dubey 23. Popular Black Women’s Fiction and the Novels of Terry McMillan 347Robin V. Smiles 24. African American Science Fiction 360Jeffrey Allen Tucker 25. Latino/a Literature and the African Diaspora 376Theresa Delgadillo 26. African American Literature and Queer Studies: The Conundrum of James Baldwin 393Guy Mark Foster 27. African American Literature and Psychoanalysis 410Arlene R. Keizer Name Index 421 Subject Index 442