Kenneth Warren, Politics and the Art of the Novel: The Case of William Gardner Smith

NOVEL THEORY

SPEAKER: Kenneth Warren, University of Chicago

RESPONDENT: Cedric Tolliver, University of Houston

Kenneth Warren's scholarship and teaching focus on American and African American literature from the late nineteenth century through the middle of the twentieth century. He is particularly interested in the way that debates about literary form and genre articulate with discussions of political and social change. His books, which include What Was African American Literature? (Harvard 2010), So Black and Blue: Ralph Ellison and the Occasion of Criticism (Chicago, 2003), and Black and White Strangers: Race and American Literary Realism (Chicago, 1993), explore how American literature by black and white writers helped consolidate, and subsequently responded to, Jim Crow America.

Cedric Tolliver teaches courses in African-American literature and culture and literary theory. His research interests are concerned with the cultures of modernity in the African diaspora, which link the African Americas and Africa. His first book Of Vagabonds and Fellow Travelers: African Diaspora Literary Culture and the Cultural Cold War (2019) was published by University of Michigan Press in the Class : Culture Series.

How To Join

Please add your name and email address to this registration page. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with a link and passcode to the event.

Please find a copy of Kenneth Warren's paper below. The passcode for the event will also open the file.

If you have any questions, please contact Deidre Lynch at deidrelynch@fas.harvard.edu or Yoon Sun Lee at ylee@wellesley.edu.