A Companion to the Harlem Renaissance presents a comprehensive collection of original essays that address the literature and culture of the Harlem Renaissance from the end of World War I to the middle of the 1930s. Represents the most comprehensive coverage of themes and unique new perspectives on the Harlem Renaissance availableFeatures original contributions from both emerging scholars of the Harlem Renaissance and established academic "stars" in the fieldOffers a variety of interdisciplinary features, such as the section on visual and expressive arts, that emphasize the collaborative nature of the eraIncludes "Spotlight Readings" featuring lesser known figures of the Harlem Renaissance and newly discovered or undervalued writings by canonical figures
Cherene Sherrard-Johnson is the Sally Mead Hands-Bascom Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of Dorothy West’s Paradise: A Biography of Class and Color (2012), Portraits of the New Negro Woman: Visual and Literary Culture in the Harlem Renaissance (2007), and the annotated edition of Jessie Redmon Fauset’s Comedy: American Style (2011).
Notes on Contributors ixIntroduction: Harlem as Shorthand: The Persistent Value of the Harlem Renaissance 1Cherene Sherrard-JohnsonPart I Foundations 151 What Renaissance?: A Deep Genealogy of Black Culture in Nineteenth-Century New York City 17Carla L. Peterson2 Postbellum, Pre-Harlem: Black Writing before the Renaissance 35Andreá N. Williams3 Harlem Nights: Expressive Culture, Popular Performance, and the New Negro 51Jayna Brown4 The New Negro and the New South 65Erin D. ChapmanPart II Spotlight: Readings and Genre 815 “All the loving words I never dared to speak”: Angelina Weld Grimké’s Sapphic Modernism 83Maureen Honey6 Modernism and the Urban Frontier in the Work of Dorothy West and Helene Johnson 103Cynthia Davis and Verner D. Mitchell7 Blueprints for Negro Reading: Sterling Brown’s Study Guides 119Sonya Posmentier8 Fashioning Internationalism in Jessie Redmon Fauset’s Writing 137Elizabeth M. Sheehan9 The New Negro Iconoclast, or, The Curious Case of George Samuel Schuyler 155Ivy G. Wilson10 Nella Larsen’s Spiritual Strivings 171Kathy L. Glass11 Pastoral and the Problem of Place in Claude McKay’s Harlem Shadows 187Jennifer Chang12 Gwendolyn Bennett: A Leading Voice of the Harlem Renaissance 203Belinda Wheeler13 Reconsidering the Literary Career of Chicago’s Zara Wright 219Rynetta Davis14 “Betwixt and between”: Zora Neale Hurston In—and Out—of Harlem 231Carla KaplanPart III Salon Culture: The Visual, Performative, and Expressive Arts 24915 Salon Cultures and Spaces of Culture Edification 251André m. Carrington16 The Sensuous Harlem Renaissance: Sexuality and Queer Culture 267Shane Vogel17 Changing Optics: Harlem Renaissance Theater and Performance 285Soyica Diggs Colbert18 Phonography, Race Records, and the Blues Poetry of Langston Hughes 301Lisa Hollenbach19 Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Sculpture of the Harlem Renaissance 317Kirsten Pai BuickPart IV Interracialism 33720 Authenticity and the Boundaries of Blackness 339J. Martin Favor21 Black Marxism and the Literary Left 351Gary Edward Holcomb22 “Light, bright and damn near white”: Representations of Mixed Race in the Harlem Renaissance 369Michele ElamPart V Beyond Harlem: New Geographies and Lasting Influences 38523 The Aesthetics of Anticipation: The Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement 387Margo Natalie Crawford24 The “Lost Years” or a “Decade of Progress”?: African American Writers and the Second World War 403Vaughn Rasberry25 Ethiopia in the Verse of the Late Harlem Renaissance 423Nadia Nurhussein26 Mapping the Harlem Renaissance in the Americas 441Michael Soto27 Virtual Harlem: Experiencing the New Negro Renaissance 457Bryan CarterIndex 473
Susan F. Beegel, John Bird, Deborah Clarke, Robert Donahoo, William Engel, Barbara Heavilin, Stacey Peebles, Philip Edward Phillips, Anthony Reynolds, Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, Brian Yothers, William I. Lutterschmidt, John Gruesser