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Psychoanalytic theory is one of the most important tools in contemporary literary criticism, and this text argues that psychoanalytic paradigms can produce rich readings of African-American desire, alienation and subjectivity. It examines figures such as Freud and Lacan.

Speaking in Tongues and Dancing Diaspora theorizes the preeminence of voice and narration (and the consequences of their absence) in the literary and cultural performances of black women.

Drawing on recent research in cultural studies and social history, Eric Lott examines the role of the blackface minstrel show in the political struggles of the years leading up to the Civil War.

Viet Nguyen argues that Asian American intellectuals need to examine their own assumptions about race, culture, and politics, and makes his case through the example of literature.

Twentieth-century America has witnessed the most widespread movement of African-Americans from the South to urban centres in the north. This study examines the impact of this dislocation identifying the resulting migration narratives as a major genre in African-American cultural production.

This study argues that American artistry in the 1960s can be understood as one of the most vital and compelling interrogations of modernity. The author posits that the legacy of slavery has made African-Americans among the most incisive critics and celebrants of the "Enlightenment inheritance".

This study argues that racial grief is not only the result of racism but also a foundation for racial identity. It proposes that racial identification is itself a melancholy act - a social category supported by loss and compensation, rejecting and retaining, denigrating and idealizing the minority.

This study examines the role of race in the construction of history. Using the historical inquiries of African American and African intellectuals, Keita analyzes the writing of history in America. Ranging from 1700 BCE to the 1990s, he offers the challenge of building new historiographies.

The creation of the Aunt Jemima trademark from an 1889 performance of a play called "The Emigrant" helped codify a pervasive connection between African-American women and food. This work demonstrates how this connection has operated as a central structuring dynamic in 20th-century America.

Arguing that gender and sexuality have always played a role in questions of black national identity, the author identifies the origins of a "national" African-American literature in 1827 and the beginnings of a novelistic tradition. He shows how various forces shaped the ideal of the black family.

This text surveys African American poetry between the onset of the Depression and the early days of the Cold War. It considers the relationship between the thematic and formal choices of African American poets, and organized ideology from "proletarian" early 1930s to the "neo-modernist" late 1940s.

In the 19th entury, the stereotype of the black male as sexual beast functioned as an externalized symbol of social chaos. This work describes American literary encounters with the conditions, processes and consequences of this and other stereotypes in mediating moments of white social crisis.

When Tom Gossett's book Race: The History of an Idea in America appeared more than a generation ago, it explored the impact of race theory on literature in a way that anticipated the entire scholarly discourse on the subject. With a new afterword by the author and an introduction by series editors Arnold Rampersad and Shelley Fisher Fishkin.

Laura Anne Doyle argues that many of the major texts of twentieth century literature revolve around concepts embodied in mother figures. By studying key novels of the Harlem Renaissance and Modernism and drawing upon the history of eugenics and anthropology, Doyle shows how mother figures represent boundaries of race and ethnicity.

This text describes the role of racial masquerade and linguistic imitation in the emergence of literary modernism. Revolting against the standard language, modernists reimagined themselves as racial aliens and mimicked the strategies of dialect speakers.

This work examines racial impersonations - blackfaces - in modern American film, fiction, poetry, painting, photography, and journalism. Gubar shows how the white popular imagination has evolved through a series of oppositional identities that are dependent on the idea of black others.

This is a study in the political, social, and cultural content of a particular literary form - the novel of slavery cast as a first-person slave narrative. The text explores the complex relationship between nostalgia and critique, and asks how African-American intellectuals made use of this form.