Outside literary studies : black criticism and the university / Andy Hines.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hines, Andy, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Criticism--Political aspects--United States--History--20th century.

Criticism.

African Americans--Study and teaching--History--20th century.

African Americans.

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

American literature.

New Criticism--United States.

New Criticism.

African American critics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (244 pages)

Place of Publication:

Chicago, Illinois : University of Chicago Press, [2022]

Summary:

A timely reconsideration of the history of the profession, Outside Literary Studies investigates how midcentury Black writers built a critical practice tuned to the struggle against racism and colonialism. This striking contribution to Black literary studies examines the practices of Black writers in the mid-twentieth century to revise our understanding of the institutionalization of literary studies in America. Andy Hines uncovers a vibrant history of interpretive resistance to university-based New Criticism by Black writers of the American left. These include well-known figures such as Langston Hughes and Lorraine Hansberry as well as still underappreciated writers like Melvin B. Tolson and Doxey Wilkerson. In their critical practice, these and other Black writers levied their critique from “outside” venues: behind the closed doors of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, in the classroom at a communist labor school under FBI surveillance, and in a host of journals. From these vantages, Black writers not only called out the racist assumptions of the New Criticism, but also defined Black literary and interpretive practices to support communist and other radical world-making efforts in the mid-twentieth century. Hines’s book thus offers a number of urgent contributions to literary studies: it spotlights a canon of Black literary texts that belong to an important era of anti-racist struggle, and it fills in the pre-history of the rise of Black studies and of ongoing Black dissent against the neoliberal university.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction

1. New Criticism and the Object of American Democracy

2. Melvin B. Tolson’s Belated Bomb

3. Tactical Criticism

4. Culture as a Powerful Weapon

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Notes

Archives and Collections Consulted

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780226818573

0226818578

OCLC:

1311331688