Afromodernisms: Paris, Harlem and the Avant-Garde

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

Author: Fionnghuala Sweeney
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Published: 02/06/2013
Pages: 264
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.10w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780748646401

Review Citation(s):
Choice 12/01/2013

About the Author

Fionnghuala Sweeney is a Lecturer in the School of English, Drama & Film at University College Dublin. She is the author of Frederick Douglass and the Atlantic World (University of Liverpool Press, 2007) and co-editor, with D Dolowitz and S Buckler, of Researching Online (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

Kate Marsh is a Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Liverpool. She is the author of India in the French Imagination: Peripheral Voices, 1754-1815 (Pickering & Chatto, 2009) and Fictions of 1947: Representations of Indian Decolonization, 1919-1962 (Peter Lang, 2007); and the co-editor, with N Frith, of France's Lost Empires: Fragmentation, Loss and la fracture coloniale (Lanham, 2010).