New Perspectives on James Weldon Johnson's "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" edited by Noelle Morrissette.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Morrissette, Noelle, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Johnson, James Weldon, 1871-1938. Autobiography of an ex-colored man.

Race in literature.

African American men in literature.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (pages cm)

Manufacture:

Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 2017

Place of Publication:

Athens : The University of Georgia Press, 2017.

Summary:

James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) exemplified the ideal of the American public intellectual as a writer, educator, songwriter, diplomat, key figure of the Harlem Renaissance, and first African American executive of the NAACP. Originally published anonymously in 1912, Johnson's novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is considered one of the foundational works of twentieth-century African American literature, and its themes and forms have been taken up by other writers, from Ralph Ellison to Teju Cole. Johnson's novel provocatively engages with political and cultural strains still prevalent in American discourse today, and it remains in print over a century after its initial publication. New Perspectives contains fresh essays that analyze the book's reverberations, the contexts within which it was created and received, the aesthetic and intellectual developments of its author, and its continuing influence on American literature and global culture. Contributors: Bruce Barnhart, Lori Brooks, Ben Glaser, Jeff Karem, Daphne Lamothe, Noelle Morrissette, Michael Nowlin, Lawrence J. Oliver, Diana Paulin, Amritjit Singh, Robert B. Stepto

Contents:

Cultures of reading, cultures of writing: canons and authenticity. "Stepping across the confines of language and race": Brander Matthews, James Weldon Johnson, and racial cosmopolitanism / Lawrence J. Oliver

How The autobiography of an ex-colored man became an unlikely literary classic / Michael Nowlin

Authenticity and transparency in The autobiography of an ex-colored man / Jeff Karem

Relational tropes: transnationalism, futurity, and the ex-colored man. The futurity of miscegenation: James Weldon Johnson's The autobiography of an ex-colored man and Pauline Hopkins's Of one blood / Diana Paulin

Blackness written, erased, rewritten: James Weldon Johnson, Teju Cole, and the Palimpsest of modernity / Daphne Lamothe

Dead ambitions and repeated interruptions: economies of race and temporality in The autobiography of an ex-coloured man / Bruce Barnhart

Poetics: sound, affect, and the archive. The autobiography as ars poetica: satire and rhythmic exegesis in "Saint Peter relates an incident" / Ben Glaser

The composer versus the "perfessor": writing race and (rag)time / Lori Brooks

James Weldon Johnson's The autobiography of an ex-colored man, archived and live / Noelle Morrissette

Legacies. W. E. B. Du Bois, Barack Obama, and the search for race: school house blues / Robert B. Stepto

Afterword. the ex-colored man for a new century.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-8203-5096-6

OCLC:

999648827