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 available Features original contributions from both emerging scholars of the Harlem Renaissance and established academic “stars” in the field Offers a variety of interdisciplinary features, such as the section on visual and expressive arts, that emphasize the collaborative nature of the era Includes “Spotlight Readings” featuring lesser known figures of the Harlem Renaissance and newly discovered or undervalued writings by canonical figures
Notes on Contributors ix Introduction: Harlem as Shorthand: The Persistent Value of the Harlem Renaissance 1 Cherene Sherrard-Johnson Part I Foundations 15 1 What Renaissance?: A Deep Genealogy of Black Culture in Nineteenth-Century New York City 17 Carla L. Peterson 2 Postbellum, Pre-Harlem: Black Writing before the Renaissance 35 Andreá N. Williams 3 Harlem Nights: Expressive Culture, Popular Performance, and the New Negro 51 Jayna Brown 4 The New Negro and the New South 65 Erin D. Chapman Part II Spotlight: Readings and Genre 81 5 “All the loving words I never dared to speak”: Angelina Weld Grimké’s Sapphic Modernism 83 Maureen Honey 6 Modernism and the Urban Frontier in the Work of Dorothy West and Helene Johnson 103 Cynthia Davis and Verner D. Mitchell 7 Blueprints for Negro Reading: Sterling Brown’s Study Guides 119 Sonya Posmentier 8 Fashioning Internationalism in Jessie Redmon Fauset’s Writing 137 Elizabeth M. Sheehan 9 The New Negro Iconoclast, or, The Curious Case of George Samuel Schuyler 155 Ivy G. Wilson 10 Nella Larsen’s Spiritual Strivings 171 Kathy L. Glass 11 Pastoral and the Problem of Place in Claude McKay’s Harlem Shadows 187 Jennifer Chang 12 Gwendolyn Bennett: A Leading Voice of the Harlem Renaissance 203 Belinda Wheeler 13 Reconsidering the Literary Career of Chicago’s Zara Wright 219 Rynetta Davis 14 “Betwixt and between”: Zora Neale Hurston In—and Out—of Harlem 231 Carla Kaplan Part III Salon Culture: The Visual, Performative, and Expressive Arts 249 15 Salon Cultures and Spaces of Culture Edification 251 André m. Carrington 16 The Sensuous Harlem Renaissance: Sexuality and Queer Culture 267 Shane Vogel 17 Changing Optics: Harlem Renaissance Theater and Performance 285 Soyica Diggs Colbert 18 Phonography, Race Records, and the Blues Poetry of Langston Hughes 301 Lisa Hollenbach 19 Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Sculpture of the Harlem Renaissance 317 Kirsten Pai Buick Part IV Interracialism 337 20 Authenticity and the Boundaries of Blackness 339 J. Martin Favor 21 Black Marxism and the Literary Left 351 Gary Edward Holcomb 22 “Light, bright and damn near white”: Representations of Mixed Race in the Harlem Renaissance 369 Michele Elam Part V Beyond Harlem: New Geographies and Lasting Influences 385 23 The Aesthetics of Anticipation: The Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement 387 Margo Natalie Crawford 24 The “Lost Years” or a “Decade of Progress”?: African American Writers and the Second World War 403 Vaughn Rasberry 25 Ethiopia in the Verse of the Late Harlem Renaissance 423 Nadia Nurhussein 26 Mapping the Harlem Renaissance in the Americas 441 Michael Soto 27 Virtual Harlem: Experiencing the New Negro Renaissance 457 Bryan Carter Index 473
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).
