A History of the Harlem Renaissance

This book presents original essays that explore the eclecticism of Harlem Renaissance literature and culture.

Rachel Farebrother (Edited by), Miriam Thaggert (Edited by)

9781108493574, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 4 February 2021

452 pages
23.5 x 16.1 x 3 cm, 0.76 kg

'this is not your grandfather's Harlem Renaissance … At every turn and in every way ... A History of the Harlem Renaissance invites and inspires readers to reconceive and reimagine both the nature and the extent of Black modernist cultural production.' Tim Ryan, Style

The Harlem Renaissance was the most influential single movement in African American literary history. The movement laid the groundwork for subsequent African American literature, and had an enormous impact on later black literature world-wide. In its attention to a wide range of genres and forms – from the roman à clef and the bildungsroman, to dance and book illustrations – this book seeks to encapsulate and analyze the eclecticism of Harlem Renaissance cultural expression. It aims to re-frame conventional ideas of the New Negro movement by presenting new readings of well-studied authors, such as Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, alongside analysis of topics, authors, and artists that deserve fuller treatment. An authoritative collection on the major writers and issues of the period, A History of the Harlem Renaissance takes stock of nearly a hundred years of scholarship and considers what the future augurs for the study of 'the New Negro'.

Introduction: revising a renaissance Rachel Farebrother and Miriam Thaggert
Part I. Re-reading the New Negro: 1. Cultural nationalism and cosmopolitanism in the Harlem renaissance Daniel G. Williams
2. Making the slave anew: poetry, history, and the archive in New Negro renaissance poetry Clare Corbould
3. The New Negro among White Modernists Kathleen Pfeiffer
4. The Bildungsroman in the Harlem renaissance Mark Whalan
5. The visual image in New Negro renaissance print culture Caroline Goeser
Part II. Experimenting with the New Negro: 6. Gwendolyn Brooks: riot after the New Negro Renaissance Sonya Posmentier
7. Romans à clef of the Harlem renaissance Sinéad Moynihan
8. Modernist biography and the question of manhood: Eslanda Goode Robeson's Paul Robeson, Negro Fionnghuala Sweeney
9. Modernism and women poets of the Harlem renaissance Maureen Honey
10. Children's Literature of the Harlem Renaissance Katharine Capshaw
Part III. Re-mapping the New Negro: 11. London, New York, and the Black Bolshevik renaissance: radical black internationalism during the New Negro renaissance James Smethurst
12. Island relations, continental visions, and graphic networks Jak Peake
13. 'Symbols from within': charting the nation's regions in James Weldon Johnson's God's trombones Noelle Morrissette
14. Rudolph Fisher: renaissance man and Harlem's interpreter Jonathan Munby
Part IV. Performing the New Negro: 15. Zora Neale Hurston's early plays Mariel Rodney
16. Zora Neale Hurston, film, and ethnography Hannah Durkin
17. The pulse of Harlem: African-American music and the New Negro revival Andrew Warnes
18. The figure of the child dancer in Harlem renaissance literature and visual culture Rachel Farebrother
19. Jazz and the Harlem renaissance Wendy Martin
20. Alain Locke and the value of the Harlem: from racial axiology to the axiology of race Shane Vogel
Afterword Deborah E. McDowell.

Subject Areas: Black & Asian studies [JFSL3], Children’s & teenage literature studies [DSY], Literary reference works [DSR], Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Biography: literary [BGL]