About this item
Highlights
- Born in Silesia, raised in the Frankfurt area and educated in Berlin, Werner Sollors has spent most of his career at Harvard University in the United States and is regarded, in Cornel West's words, 'as one of the finest scholars that we have on race and cultural hybridity in both this country and the world'.
- Author(s): Werner Sollors
- 480 Pages
- Literary Criticism, American
Description
About the Book
The first comprehensive overview of Werner Sollors' ground-breaking work on culture and ethnicity.Book Synopsis
Born in Silesia, raised in the Frankfurt area and educated in Berlin, Werner Sollors has spent most of his career at Harvard University in the United States and is regarded, in Cornel West's words, 'as one of the finest scholars that we have on race and cultural hybridity in both this country and the world'. This Reader offers the first comprehensive overview of the work of a central figure in the field of ethnic studies. The pieces collected here range from Puritan New England to contemporary Germany, from 'Exodus' to Mary Antin's Promised Land, from the 'Curse of Ham' to Teju Cole. They attest to Sollors' deep historical sensibilities, his attention to textual detail and his awareness of the costs and opportunities of both cosmopolitan ideals and particularist commitments, whilst addressing a central question: why does modernisation take the form of ethnicisation in many places around the globe?
The collected essays are complemented by a detailed introduction by Daniel G. Williams which foregrounds some of the key emphases and tensions in Sollors' writings.Review Quotes
What this doorstop of an anthology proves is that no matter what topic Sollors turns to--the role of ethnicity in American literature, the benefits of multilingualism, the importance of interracial relationships in American culture--the different strands of his thinking always converge, in a cogent refutation of all exclusionary definitions of Americanness.--Christoph Irmscher "Harvard Magazine"
The Werner Sollors Reader doesn't need posterity to be considered a cultural classic. These are spectacular essays, wide-ranging and shape-shifting. They courageously risk engaging with the most pressing predicaments of literary history and cultural values as they unfold in the everyday of our living and thinking. Sollors has crafted a critical voice of enduring civility to develop a cosmopolitanism of the marginalized and overlooked. At the same time, Sollors celebrates the enormous brilliance and creativity of African Americans in the US and minorities elsewhere.--Homi Bhabha, Harvard University