Commerce in color : race, consumer culture, and American literature, 1893-1933 / James C. Davis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Davis, James C. (James Cyril)

Series:

Class, culture.

Class, culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--20th century--History and criticism.

American literature.

Consumption (Economics) in literature.

Material culture--United States--History--20th century.

Material culture.

Popular culture--United States--History--20th century.

Popular culture.

Racism in popular culture.

African American consumers--Social conditions.

African American consumers.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (309 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, c2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Commerce in Color explores the juncture of consumer culture and race by examining advertising, literary texts, mass culture, and public events in the United States from 1893 to 1933. James C. Davis takes up a remarkable range of subjectsincluding the crucial role publishers Boni and Liveright played in the marketing of Harlem Renaissance literature, Henry Jamess critique of materialism in The American Scene, and the commodification of racialized popular culture in James Weldon Johnsons The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Manas he argues that racial thinking was central to the emergence of U.S. consumerism and, conversely, that an emerging consumer culture was a key element in the development of racial thinking and the consolidation of racial identity in America. By urging a reassessment of the familiar rubrics of the culture of consumption and the culture of segregation, Dawson poses new and provocative questions about American culture and social history. Both an influential literary study and an absorbing historical read, Commerce in Color proves thatin Americaadvertising, publicity, and the development of the modern economy cannot be understood apart from the question of race. A welcome addition to existing scholarship, Daviss study of the intersection of racial thinking and the emergence of consumer culture makes connections very few scholars have considered. James Smethurst, University of Massachusetts James C. Davis is Assistant Professor of English at Brooklyn College.

Contents:

Contents; Introduction; 1. No Place of Race: Consumer Culture's Critical Tradition; 2. ""Stage Business"" as Citizenship: Ida B. Wells at the World's Columbian Exposition; 3. Thrown into Relief: Distinction Making in The American Scene; 4. Race-changes as Exchanges: The Autobiography of an Ex-coloured Man; 5. A Black Culture Industry: Public Relations and the ""New Negro"" at Boni and Liveright; 6. Confessions of the Flesh: The Mass Public in Epidermal Trouble in Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts and George Schuyler's Black No More; Conclusion: Leaving Muncie; Notes; Bibliography; Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 279-290) and index.

ISBN:

1-282-59772-8

9786612597725

0-472-02607-0

OCLC:

923502003