Afromodernisms - by Fionnghuala Sweeney & Kate Marsh (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book stretches and challenges current canonical configurations of modernism by considering the centrality of black artists, writers and intellectuals as core presences in the development of a modernist avant-garde; and by interrogating 'blackness' as an aesthetic and political category at critical moments during the twentieth century.

Book Synopsis

Persuasively argues for a black Atlantic literary renaissance and its impact on modernist studies
These 9 new chapters stretch current canonical configurations of modernism in two key ways: by considering the centrality of black artists, writers and intellectuals as key actors and core presences in the development of a modernist avant-garde; and by interrogating 'blackness' as an aesthetic and political category at critical moments during the early twentieth century. This is the first book-length publication to explore the term 'Afromodernisms' and the first study to address together the fields of modernism and the black Atlantic.
Key Features:
Sets a new agenda for the study of blackness and modernism
Opening essay from Tyler Stovall on Black Modernism and an Afterword from Bill Lawson
Identifies key locations of modernism: Harlem, Paris and the Caribbean
Addresses the question of gender, often overlooked in black Atlantic scholarship

From the Back Cover

Persuasively argues for a black Atlantic literary renaissance and its impact on modernist studies These 9 new chapters stretch current canonical configurations of modernism in two key ways: by considering the centrality of black artists, writers and intellectuals as key actors and core presences in the development of a modernist avant-garde; and by interrogating 'blackness' as an aesthetic and political category at critical moments during the early twentieth century. This is the first book-length publication to explore the term 'Afromodernisms' and the first study to address together the fields of modernism and the black Atlantic. Key Features: Sets a new agenda for the study of blackness and modernism Opening essay from Tyler Stovall on Black Modernism and an Afterword from Bill Lawson Identifies key locations of modernism: Harlem, Paris and the Caribbean Addresses the question of gender, often overlooked in black Atlantic scholarship Fionnghuala Sweeney is Lecturer in American Literature and University College Dublin. Her research is on nineteenth and twentieth-century African American literature and culture, literature and slavery, internationalist dimensions of the New Negro movement, and intersections between Ireland and the black Atlantic. Kate Marsh is Senior Lecturer in French Studies at the University of Liverpool. She has written widely on post-1754 French history and literature, and French colonial and regional history. Her publications include: India in the French Imagination: Peripheral Voices, 1754-1815, (2009), and the collection, edited with Nicola Frith, France's Lost Empires: Fragmentation, Loss, and la fracture colonial, (2010).

Review Quotes

Convincingly demonstrates the ways in which the period under consideration helped "define the aesthetics and politics of the twentieth century, and through this [the collection] links the cognate fields of modernism and the black Atlantic"--Dominic Thomas, University of California, Los Angeles "French Studies"

About the Author

Fionnghuala Sweeney is Lecturer at the University College Dublin Kate Marsh is Senior Lecturer at the University of Liverpool Kate Marsh is Senior Lecturer at the University of Liverpool