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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
- 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.
- African American consumers.
- Social conditions.
- History.
- United States.
- Racism in popular culture.
- African American consumers--Social conditions.
- Genre:
- Electronic books.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (viii, 298 pages) : illustrations.
- Place of Publication:
- Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, c2007.
- System Details:
- text file
- 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 subjects-including the crucial role publishers Boni and Liveright played in the marketing of Harlem Renaissance literature, Henry James's critique of materialism in The American Scene, and the commodification of racialized popular culture in James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man-as 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," Davis 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 that-in America-advertising, publicity, and the development of the modern economy cannot be understood apart from the question of race.
- Contents:
- 1 No Place of Race: Consumer Culture's Critical Tradition 19
- 2 "Stage Business" as Citizenship: Ida B. Wells at the World's Columbian Exposition 64
- 3 Thrown into Relief: Distinction Making in the American Scene 85
- 4 Race-changes as Exchanges: The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man 129
- 5 A Black Culture Industry: Public Relations and the "New Negro" at Boni and Liveright 169
- 6 Confessions of the Flesh: The Mass Public in Epidermal Trouble in Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts and George Schuyler's Black No More 213
- Conclusion: Leaving Muncie 248.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-290) and index.
- Description based on information from the publisher.
- ISBN:
- 9780472099870
- 0472099876
- 9780472069873
- 047206987X
- Publisher Number:
- 10.3998/mpub.223234
- Access Restriction:
- Restricted for use by site license.
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