A Companion to African American Literature

Through a series of essays that explore the forms, themes, genres, historical contexts, major authors, and latest critical approaches, A Companion to African American Literature presents a comprehensive chronological overview of African American literature from the eighteenth century to the modern day Examines African American literature from its earliest origins, through the rise of antislavery literature in the decades leading into the Civil War, to the modern development of contemporary African American cultural media, literary aesthetics, and political ideologies Addresses the latest critical and scholarly approaches to African American literature Features essays by leading established literary scholars as well as newer voices

Notes on Contributors viii  Introduction 1 Gene Andrew Jarrett  Part I. The Literatures of Africa, Middle Passage, Slavery, and Freedom: The Early and Antebellum Periods, c.1750–1865 9  1. Back to the Future: Eighteenth-Century Transatlantic Black Authors 11 Vincent Carretta  2. Africa in Early African American Literature 25 James Sidbury  3. Ports of Call, Pulpits of Consultation: Rethinking the Origins of African American Literature 45 Frances Smith FosterandKim D. Green  4. The Constitution of Toussaint: Another Origin of African American Literature 59 Michael J. DrexlerandEd White  5. Religion in Early African American Literature 75 Joanna BrooksandTyler Mabry  6. The Economies of the Slave Narrative 90 Philip Gould  7. The 1850s: The First Renaissance of Black Letters 103 Maurice S. Lee  8. African American Literary Nationalism 119 Robert S. Levine  9. Periodicals, Print Culture, and African American Poetry 133 Ivy G. Wilson  Part II. New Negro Aesthetics, Culture, and Politics: The Modern Period, 1865–c.1940 149  10. Racial Uplift and the Literature of the New Negro 151 Marlon B. Ross  11. The Dialect of New Negro Literature 169 Gene Andrew Jarrett  12. African American Literary Realism, 1865–1914 185 Andreá N. Williams  13. Folklore and African American Literature in the Post-Reconstruction Era 200 Shirley Moody-Turner  14. The Harlem Renaissance: The New Negro at Home and Abroad 212 Michelle Ann Stephens  15. Transatlantic Collaborations: Visual Culture in African American Literature 227 Cherene Sherrard-Johnson  16. Aesthetic Hygiene: Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Work of Art 243 Mark Christian Thompson  17. African American Modernism and State Surveillance 254 William J. Maxwell  Part III. Reforming the Canon, Tradition, and Criticism of African American Literature: The Contemporary Period, c.1940–Present 269  18. The Chicago Renaissance 271 Michelle Yvonne Gordon  19. Jazz and African American Literature 286 Keith D. Leonard  20. The Black Arts Movement 302 James Edward Smethurst  21. Humor in African American Literature 315 Glenda R. Carpio  22. Neo-Slave Narratives 332 Madhu Dubey  23. Popular Black Women’s Fiction and the Novels of Terry McMillan 347 Robin V. Smiles  24. African American Science Fiction 360 Jeffrey Allen Tucker  25. Latino/a Literature and the African Diaspora 376 Theresa Delgadillo  26. African American Literature and Queer Studies: The Conundrum of James Baldwin 393 Guy Mark Foster  27. African American Literature and Psychoanalysis 410 Arlene R. Keizer  Name Index 421  Subject Index 442