Alexandra Hartmann holds a PhD from Paderborn University where she is an assistant professor of American studies. She specializes in African American studies and especially the intellectual, cultural, and literary history of the twentieth and twenty-first century.

• 1. Introduction.- 2. Embodiment, Agency, and Conceptions of Hope in Black Humanist Thought Embodied Subjectivity and Embodied Blackness.- 3. Self-Reliance Towards Deep Democracy: Theorizing Racial Embodiment in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.- 4. The (Im)Possibility of Interracial Relationships in John A. Williams’ Night Song.- 5. Subjectivities between Structure and Agency: Enlightenment Humanism, Gendered Trauma, and Community in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.- 6. Precarity, Mourning, and Notes of Consolation in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing.- 7. Epilogue: Writing Beyond Pessimism.

Alexandra Hartmann holds a PhD from Paderborn University where she is an assistant professor of American studies. She specializes in African American studies and especially the intellectual, cultural, and literary history of the twentieth and twenty-first century.

• 1. Introduction.- 2. Embodiment, Agency, and Conceptions of Hope in Black Humanist Thought Embodied Subjectivity and Embodied Blackness.- 3. Self-Reliance Towards Deep Democracy: Theorizing Racial Embodiment in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.- 4. The (Im)Possibility of Interracial Relationships in John A. Williams’ Night Song.- 5. Subjectivities between Structure and Agency: Enlightenment Humanism, Gendered Trauma, and Community in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.- 6. Precarity, Mourning, and Notes of Consolation in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing.- 7. Epilogue: Writing Beyond Pessimism.