Teaching the Harlem Renaissance

The Editor: Michael Soto is Associate Professor of English at Trinity University, where he teaches courses in twentieth-century literature and cultural history. His previous books are The Modernist Nation: Generation, Renaissance, and Twentieth-Century American Literature (2004) and Resources for Teaching the Bedford Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 2 (2008). He holds degrees in modern thought and literature from Stanford University (A.B.) and in English and American literature and language from Harvard University (A.M., Ph.D.).

• Contents: Michael Soto: Introduction: Teaching the Harlem Renaissance – Dorothea Löbbermann: The Renaissance’s Harlem: Representing Race and Place – Claudia Stokes: Literary Retrospection in the Harlem Renaissance – William J. Maxwell: Harlem Polemics, Harlem Aesthetics – Martha Jane Nadell: Visual Art of the Harlem Renaissance – Amber Harris Leichner: Harlem and the New Woman – Laura Harris: On Teaching a Black Queer Harlem Renaissance – Maureen Honey: Teaching Women Poets of the Harlem Renaissance – James Smethurst: Teaching Sterling Brown’s Poetry – Patrick S. Bernard: Teaching Countee Cullen’s Poetry – Susan Tomlinson: Teaching Jessie Fauset’s Plum Bun – Kathleen Pfeiffer: Teaching Waldo Frank’s Holiday – Anita Patterson: Teaching Langston Hughes’s Poetry – Hans Ostrom: Teaching Langston Hughes’s The Ways of White Folks – Lawrence J. Oliver: Teaching James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man – Emily M. Hinnov: Teaching Nella Larsen’s Quicksand – Tom Lutz: Teaching Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem – Michael Soto: Teaching The New Negro – Rita Keresztesi: Teaching George S. Schuyler’s Black No More – Elisa Glick: Teaching Wallace Thurman’s Infants of the Spring – Nathan Grant: Teaching Jean Toomer’s Cane – Emily Bernard: Teaching Carl Van Vechten’s Nigger Heaven – Adam McKible: Teaching Edward Christopher Williams’s When Washington Was in Vogue.

«In a word, ‘Teaching the Harlem Renaissance’ is indispensable. It draws on the most recent scholarship – including perspectives from feminism, Marxism, queer studies, and visual culture – and presents in it a format ready for classroom use.» (Cheryl A. Wall, Board of Governors Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English, Rutgers University)