The Harlem Renaissance was the most celebrated African American cultural movement throughout the history of the United States owing to the massive and remarkable literature output by African American artists. Yet, attention to the white participants is limited. One of the most significant white patrons and writers, Carl Van Vechten and his fifth novel Nigger Heaven (1926) have cast noteworthy influences on African Americans, the American society and the Harlem Renaissance. To examine Van Vechten and his most important work and their connection with the Harlem Renaissance in greater details, this thesis focuses heavily on the novel as well as the paper collections of Van Vechten at New York Public Library. Thus, the research method of this thesis is an archival one. Despite little attention to this novel and its author, this thesis argues that they both serve as an unprecedented experience towards literature on African Americans and racial complexity in the United States during the 1920s. The first chapter focuses on the change from his initial fascination towards the “exoticism” and “primitivism” of African Americans to a genuine appreciation of the talents of African American artists of the Harlem controversial text regarding its title and the fact that the author was a white man yet decided to write a story on African Americans. This novel is significant in a sense that it inspires discussions on issues such as the phenomenon of “passing”, the “color line” and the masculinity of white patronage in Harlem in the 1920s. Additionally, it facilitates examination on the historical complexity of the word “nigger”. Chapter three focuses on the mixed critiques towards the novel. Although the author insists that this is a work of irony about the contemporary racial complexity, such irony did not seem to work for everyone. The ambivalent responses from African American audiences are intriguing for in‐depth analysis. Moreover, the initial covers of Nigger Heaven contain important implications and stories to be told. This thesis aims to indicate that Van Vechten and Nigger Heaven deserve more attention while such insufficiency offers room for further studies. / published_or_final_version / Modern Languages and Cultures / Master / Master of Philosophy

This dissertation examines intra-racial colorism in works by writers who began their careers during the Harlem Renaissance, but whose writings span almost a century. In these writings, colorism; which can be defined as a bias directed toward an individual that is based on skin tone, is portrayed an intra-racial practice that results from the internalization of racist ideals. The practice relies on a hierarchy that most often privileges those closest to the color line. However, these depictions also show that the preponderance of skin tones can sometimes determine who is targeted. For the purposes of this study it is called reverse colorism when the bias is directed by individuals darker in skin tone toward those who are lighter. Consequently, the careful descriptions of the shades and hues of black characters becomes more than aesthetics and can be seen as a coded reference to experiential differences. While Alain Locke hailed the start of the Harlem Renaissance to signal the rise of The New Negro, the writings featured by female writers in this dissertation advance a less optimistic reality for women, who had to contend with both inter- and intra-racial bias because of their skin tone. Colorism is identified as a particularly prevalent presence in the lives of black women, who also saw skin tone subjectively and viewed themselves as darker than their male counterparts.

Claude McKay (1890-1948) is best known as a major figure of the Harlem Renaissance and a pioneer of Caribbean literature. He is less well known as a political thinker and activist. This thesis undertakes three tasks. First, it provides a detailed presentation of Claude McKay's political ideas and practices over time. Second, it critically engages with these. And finally, in the process, debunks and challenges a number of pervasive misconceptions of McKayfs politics. Although the analysis covers the period 1890 to 1920, it nevertheless is based upon the entire corpus of McKay's work - published and unpublished - from his early writings in Jamaica to those up to his death in 1948. His preoccupations and thought are placed within their historical context. The thesis thus draws upon his non-fiction texts, poetry, novels, short stories, journalism, unfinished manuscripts and correspondence. In the process, it demonstrates that McKay was a major political thinker, that his ideas have remarkable resonance today, especially in the United States, and that they are still relevant to contemporary black politics, particularly to those of the African diaspora. All in all, the thesis is a contribution to a better understanding of a remarkable man and outstanding figure of the African diaspora.

Diss.--Teilw. zugl.: Univ. of Minnesota, 1969.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1997. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [240]-248).

Texte remanié de: Thesis Ph. D. Comparative literature--Buffalo, N.Y.--State university of New York, 1998. / Notes bibliogr.

Thesis (M.A.)--Bowling Green State University, 2007. / Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 109 p. Includes bibliographical references.

This research looks at the ethnographies Mules and Men (1935) and Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica (1938) by Zora Neale Hurston focusing on representations of Time and the anthropologist’s body. Hurston was an African-American anthropologist, folklorist, and novelist who conducted research particularly between the end of the 1920s and the mid-1930s. At first, her fieldwork and writings dealt with African-American communities in Florida and Hoodoo practice in Louisiana, but she consequently expanded her field of anthropological interests to Jamaica and Haiti, which she visited between 1936 and 1937. The temporal and bodily factors in Hurston’s works are taken into consideration as coordinates of differentiation between the ethnographer and the objects of her research. In her ethnographies, the representation of the anthropologist’s body is analysed as an attempt at reducing temporal distance in ethnographical writings paralleled by the performative experience of fieldwork exemplified by Hurston’s storytelling: body, voice, and the dialogic representation of fieldwork relationships do not guarantee a portrayal of the anthropological subject on more egalitarian terms, but cast light on the influence of the anthropologist both in the practice and writing of ethnography. These elements are analysed in reference to the visualistic tradition of American anthropology as ways of organising difference and ascribing the anthropological ‘Others’ to a temporal frame characterised by bodily and cultural features perceived as ‘primitive’ and, therefore, distant from modernity. Representations and definitions of ‘primitiveness’ and ‘modernity’ not only shaped both twentieth-century American anthropology and the modernist arts (Harlem Renaissance), but also were pivotal for the creation of a modern African-American identity in its relation to African history and other black people involved in the African diaspora. In the same years in which Hurston visited Jamaica and Haiti, another African-American woman anthropologist and dancer, Katherine Dunham, conducted fieldwork in the Caribbean and started to look at it as a source of inspiration for the emerging African-American dance as recorded in her ethnographical and autobiographical account Island Possessed (1969). Therefore, Hurston’s and Dunham’s representations of Haiti are examined as points of intersection for the different discourses which both widened and complicated their understanding of what being ‘African’ and ‘American’ could mean.

Amas Repertory Theatre was founded in 1969 by Rosetta LeNoire, an African American actress who pursued a mission of developing original musicals while practicing interracial casting. The company's most successful show was Bubbling Brown Sugar (1975). Throughout Amas's history LeNoire's complicated perspective on what constituted discrimination sometimes caused her casting choices to be questioned. LeNoire believed in a colorblind theatre and society, however, as the decades passed, her colorblind perspective was challenged by neo-conservative philosophy which states that in a colorblind society no particular group should receive any more privilege than another. This definition of colorblind is used to justify conservative efforts to eliminate affirmative action and undermine race conscious legislation. In the late 1990s, at her retirement, LeNoire, who always believed that color did not matter, turned her theatre over to white leadership, who still operate Amas today. At that point, Amas changed from a company that had, from its founding, been considered to be a black theatre to one that is now white. As the history of Amas unfolds, my study examines the complex politics surrounding the concept of colorblindness. Efforts by Actors' Equity to promote interracial or, as it is often called, nontraditional casting are also investigated as well as the conservative backlash against race conscious policies, particularly during and after the administration of Ronald Reagan. In the present day Amas practices a multicultural mission, however, as my dissertation examines the company's programming decisions as well as its perspective on race, Amas is revealed to be an example of how white operated theatres, even if unintentionally, through the agency of white power and privilege, are affected by the same institutional racism that permeates American society. My dissertation then challenges Amas and other theatres to take responsibility for staying fully aware of the racially charged issues and tensions that exist in America today. When theatre professionals seek out and are committed to engaging in open dialogue on race they are in a stronger position to make knowledgeable decisions regarding the representation of race on stage.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1998. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 267-310). Also available on the Internet.