This dissertation examines the various discursive expressions of black agency that formed the stereotypical representations of African descendants found in Victorian racial discourse. It is, therefore, an analysis of the discursive practices of peoples of African descent and not of the actual stereotypes frequently associated with Victorian racial discourse. I believe that a close reading and analysis of the discursive practices of peoples of African descent subject to British rule will generate more focused critical narratives about the fantasies that plagued the British imagination well into the twentieth century. This study also suggest that contemporary scholars should start looking at Victorian racial discourse as an active dialogue and conversation with the Other, rather than a description of the psychology of power. / English

Doctoral dissertation: Panoptical tropes and negotiations between art and politics in Charles Johnson's short fiction Abstract The dissertation traces the uneasy marriage between ideology and aesthetics in African American literature, and its reflections in Charles Johnson's short fiction. The historical introduction is an attempt to reevaluate the tradition of ideological self-policing in African American literature. Its central thesis resides in the claim that African American literature and its critical reception has still retained some of this ideological template, in a manner and degree that throws it out of sync with the mainstream trajectory of American literature. This lingering anachronism cannot be legitimately attributed to a single causative circumstance, yet one of the more obvious explanations for this residual trend is the living memory of overt discriminatory practices in many parts of the United States, which is why the centrifugal literary discourses of assimilationism and protest fiction are still very vibrant. This simple argument alone provides a sufficient basis for contextualizing and understanding the thesis that ideological writing still inadvertently manages to find its way into African American fictional pursuits. This is also underscored by the observable fact that even the...