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This dissertation proposes that the work produced by black writers between the end of the Depression and the end ofWorld War II, specifically that ofEllison, Himes and Petry--and to the degree that it influenced the others, that ofWright--comprises a distinct period in African American literature. Their work is characterized by a concern with the implications of the war for the self-determination of African Americans within the United States and for people of colour worldwide. In addition, these writers explored the effects of the war effort, particularly ofthe second Great Migration ofblack Americans from South to North, on the cultural and political strategies of African Americans as a whole. These migrants, the majority of whom had been employed as agricultural or domestic labourers in the South, entered into industrial occupations and left service work in private homes in unprecedented numbers. In their prewar role within a neo-feudal southern economy characterized by white power over the labouring black body, these workers were seen by many contemporary commentators, and particularly those aligned with the American Left, as conforming to a socio-economic category of the "folk." In the South, the black folk had developed strategies for survival and resistance, many of which were contained in their folklore. As these migrants entered into industrial relations of production and a concomitant working-class consciousness in a war-driven economy, African American writers, intellectuals, and workers were faced with the question of the degree to which this folk "past" was usable in the present. In the work ofEllison, Himes and Petry, the figure of the black folk in the urban-industrial environment, as it e/merged with the working class, became the embodied site for an examination of the massive cultural and political shifts engendered by World War II. In addition, each ofthese writers employed black folklore as a strategy in the struggle for Mrican American selfdetermination within the United States during the war. / This dissertation proposes that the work produced by black writers between the end of the Depression and the end ofWorld War II, specifically that ofEllison, Himes and Petry--and to the degree that it influenced the others, that ofWright--comprises a distinct period in African American literature. Their work is characterized by a concern with the implications of the war for the self-determination of African Americans within the United States and for people of colour worldwide. In addition, these writers explored the effects of the war effort, particularly ofthe second Great Migration ofblack Americans from South to North, on the cultural and political strategies of African Americans as a whole. These migrants, the majority of whom had been employed as agricultural or domestic labourers in the South, entered into industrial occupations and left service work in private homes in unprecedented numbers. In their prewar role within a neo-feudal southern economy characterized by white power over the labouring black body, these workers were seen by many contemporary commentators, and particularly those aligned with the American Left, as conforming to a socio-economic category of the "folk." In the South, the black folk had developed strategies for survival and resistance, many of which were contained in their folklore. As these migrants entered into industrial relations of production and a concomitant working-class consciousness in a war-driven economy, African American writers, intellectuals, and workers were faced with the question of the degree to which this folk "past" was usable in the present. In the work ofEllison, Himes and Petry, the figure of the black folk in the urban-industrial environment, as it e/merged with the working class, became the embodied site for an examination of the massive cultural and political shifts engendered by World War II. In addition, each ofthese writers employed black folklore as a strategy in the struggle for Mrican American selfdetermination within the United States during the war. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI/Dissertation Abstracts International.

Zugl.: Konstanz, Univ., Diss., 2006

Black Western Thought: Toward a Theory of the Black Citizen-Object troubles and challenges the philosophical category of the human, particularly the black human. Oppositionally reading Enlightenment texts like Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful and Emanuel Kant’s Observations on the Feelings of the Beautiful and Sublime, I extend Emanuel Eze and Charles Mills critiques of Kant and the Enlightenment through relinquishing the quest for a black humanity. This project embraces the abjection of blackness and posits that in the rejection of quest for humanity the black citizen-object reveals heretofore unexplored ontology, epistemology, poetics, and philosophy. Through careful close-reading of poets Phillis Wheatley, Terrance Hayes, Natasha Trethewey, and Jericho Brown, this project explores the political and aesthetic possibility of extending the democracy of subjectivity and presiding intelligence to black aesthetic and intellectual productions. Moving away from the notion of blackness as fear-inducing, funky, reprobate, and disorderly, this project constantly seeks to play with the dark rather than play in the dark. This act of ‘playing with the dark’ manifests as an interrogation of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man in relationship to quantum physics and visibility / invisibility of blackness. The project hopes to shake the very stable ground of the ontology of aesthetics and academic discourse. / text

As they took stock of the ways that the Great Migration and America’s post-war global role were changing the South, Richard Wright, Carson McCullers, Ralph Ellison, and Albert Murray crafted narratives that articulated a particular perspective on the South. These writers dreamed of putting the regionally distinctive characteristics that they found valuable in the South into conversation with a sense of expansiveness and possibility, one that they associated with a migratory and increasingly globally-connected nation. In this project, I examine these southern cosmopolitan negotiations in Wright, McCullers, Ellison, and Murray’s southern narratives, and I argue that these writers are crucial to our understanding of the post-migration South in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. / text

<p>This dissertation is concerned with the relationships between experiments in literature, science, and politics in twentieth-century United States culture. I argue that the three can be considered together by understanding "experimentation" as a set of processes rather than a method, and highlighting the centrality of writing and reading to experiments in all three arenas. Drawing on scientist Ludwik Fleck's concept of "valuable experiments," I read specific experiments in each field in conversation with the others, highlighting the ways in which science and politics require aesthetic structures, the ways in which science and literature reconfigure politics, and the ways in which politics and literature can intervene in and reconfigure scientific practices. Ultimately, I try to develop a reading practice that can make visible the shared transformative capacities of science, literature, and radical politics.</p><p>In the course of three chapters, I analyze the formal and conceptual innovations of writers such as William Burroughs, Ralph Ellison, and Carson McCullers, who were intimately affected by the uses of experimental science in corrective institutional practice. In doing so, I develop a concept of "experimental literature" that is distinct from avant-garde literature and can account for the investments that these writers share with scientists such as Albert Hofmann, Albert Einstein, and Margaret Mead. I argue that experimental writers denature literary genres that depend on coherent subjects, transparent reality, and developmental progress in order to disrupt similar assumptions that underpin positivist science. By understanding valuable experimental science and writing as continuous challenges to standardized scientific knowledge, I show how these writers contribute to ongoing radical social projects of queer and black radical traditions--such as those of George Jackson and the Combahee River Collective--which are grounded in knowledge as an aesthetic and political practice.</p> / Dissertation

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2007. Graduate Programme in Education. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 222-233). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:NR29322

Thesis--Heidelberg, 1978. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 253-267).