A Companion to the Harlem Renaissance

by Cherene Sherrard-Johnson (Editor)

Overview

A Companion to the Harlem Renaissance presents a comprehensive collection of original essays that address the literature and culture of the Harlem Renaissance from the end of World War I to the middle of the 1930s.

• Represents the most comprehensive coverage of themes and unique new perspectives on the Harlem Renaissance available
• Features original contributions from both emerging scholars of the Harlem Renaissance and established academic "stars" in the field
• Offers a variety of interdisciplinary features, such as the section on visual and expressive arts, that emphasize the collaborative nature of the era
• Includes "Spotlight Readings" featuring lesser known figures of the Harlem Renaissance and newly discovered or undervalued writings by canonical figures

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781119054535
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	11/24/2025
Series:	Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture
Pages:	496
Product dimensions:	6.69(w) x 9.61(h) x (d)

About the Author

Cherene Sherrard-Johnson is the Sally Mead Hands-Bascom Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of Dorothy West’s Paradise: A Biography of Class and Color (2012), Portraits of the New Negro Woman: Visual and Literary Culture in the Harlem Renaissance (2007), and the annotated edition of Jessie Redmon Fauset’s Comedy: American Style (2011).

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Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors ix

Introduction: Harlem as Shorthand: The Persistent Value of the Harlem Renaissance 1
Cherene Sherrard-Johnson

Part I Foundations 15

1 What Renaissance?: A Deep Genealogy of Black Culture in Nineteenth-Century New York City 17
Carla L. Peterson

2 Postbellum, Pre-Harlem: Black Writing before the Renaissance 35
Andreá N. Williams

3 Harlem Nights: Expressive Culture, Popular Performance, and the New Negro 51
Jayna Brown

4 The New Negro and the New South 65
Erin D. Chapman

Part II Spotlight: Readings and Genre 81

5 “All the loving words I never dared to speak”: Angelina Weld Grimké’s Sapphic Modernism 83
Maureen Honey

6 Modernism and the Urban Frontier in the Work of Dorothy West and Helene Johnson 103
Cynthia Davis and Verner D. Mitchell

7 Blueprints for Negro Reading: Sterling Brown’s Study Guides 119
Sonya Posmentier

8 Fashioning Internationalism in Jessie Redmon Fauset’s Writing 137
Elizabeth M. Sheehan

9 The New Negro Iconoclast, or, The Curious Case of George Samuel Schuyler 155
Ivy G. Wilson

10 Nella Larsen’s Spiritual Strivings 171
Kathy L. Glass

11 Pastoral and the Problem of Place in Claude McKay’s Harlem Shadows 187
Jennifer Chang

12 Gwendolyn Bennett: A Leading Voice of the Harlem Renaissance 203
Belinda Wheeler

13 Reconsidering the Literary Career of Chicago’s Zara Wright 219
Rynetta Davis

14 “Betwixt and between”: Zora Neale Hurston In—and Out—of Harlem 231
Carla Kaplan

Part III Salon Culture: The Visual, Performative, and Expressive Arts 249

15 Salon Cultures and Spaces of Culture Edification 251
André m. Carrington

16 The Sensuous Harlem Renaissance: Sexuality and Queer Culture 267
Shane Vogel

17 Changing Optics: Harlem Renaissance Theater and Performance 285
Soyica Diggs Colbert

18 Phonography, Race Records, and the Blues Poetry of Langston Hughes 301
Lisa Hollenbach

19 Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Sculpture of the Harlem Renaissance 317
Kirsten Pai Buick

Part IV Interracialism 337

20 Authenticity and the Boundaries of Blackness 339
J. Martin Favor

21 Black Marxism and the Literary Left 351
Gary Edward Holcomb

22 “Light, bright and damn near white”: Representations of Mixed Race in the Harlem Renaissance 369
Michele Elam

Part V Beyond Harlem: New Geographies and Lasting Influences 385

23 The Aesthetics of Anticipation: The Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement 387
Margo Natalie Crawford

24 The “Lost Years” or a “Decade of Progress”?: African American Writers and the Second World War 403
Vaughn Rasberry

25 Ethiopia in the Verse of the Late Harlem Renaissance 423
Nadia Nurhussein

26 Mapping the Harlem Renaissance in the Americas 441
Michael Soto

27 Virtual Harlem: Experiencing the New Negro Renaissance 457
Bryan Carter

Index 473