Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors ix
Introduction: Harlem as Shorthand: The Persistent Value of the Harlem Renaissance 1Cherene Sherrard-Johnson
Part I Foundations 15
1 What Renaissance?: A Deep Genealogy of Black Culture in Nineteenth-Century New York City 17Carla L. Peterson
2 Postbellum, Pre-Harlem: Black Writing before the Renaissance 35Andreá N. Williams
3 Harlem Nights: Expressive Culture, Popular Performance, and the New Negro 51Jayna Brown
4 The New Negro and the New South 65Erin 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 83Maureen Honey
6 Modernism and the Urban Frontier in the Work of Dorothy West and Helene Johnson 103Cynthia Davis and Verner D. Mitchell
7 Blueprints for Negro Reading: Sterling Brown’s Study Guides 119Sonya Posmentier
8 Fashioning Internationalism in Jessie Redmon Fauset’s Writing 137Elizabeth M. Sheehan
9 The New Negro Iconoclast, or, The Curious Case of George Samuel Schuyler 155Ivy G. Wilson
10 Nella Larsen’s Spiritual Strivings 171Kathy L. Glass
11 Pastoral and the Problem of Place in Claude McKay’s Harlem Shadows 187Jennifer Chang
12 Gwendolyn Bennett: A Leading Voice of the Harlem Renaissance 203Belinda Wheeler
13 Reconsidering the Literary Career of Chicago’s Zara Wright 219Rynetta Davis
14 “Betwixt and between”: Zora Neale Hurston In—and Out—of Harlem 231Carla Kaplan
Part III Salon Culture: The Visual, Performative, and Expressive Arts 249
15 Salon Cultures and Spaces of Culture Edification 251André m. Carrington
16 The Sensuous Harlem Renaissance: Sexuality and Queer Culture 267Shane Vogel
17 Changing Optics: Harlem Renaissance Theater and Performance 285Soyica Diggs Colbert
18 Phonography, Race Records, and the Blues Poetry of Langston Hughes 301Lisa Hollenbach
19 Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Sculpture of the Harlem Renaissance 317Kirsten Pai Buick
Part IV Interracialism 337
20 Authenticity and the Boundaries of Blackness 339J. Martin Favor
21 Black Marxism and the Literary Left 351Gary Edward Holcomb
22 “Light, bright and damn near white”: Representations of Mixed Race in the Harlem Renaissance 369Michele Elam
Part V Beyond Harlem: New Geographies and Lasting Influences 385
23 The Aesthetics of Anticipation: The Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement 387Margo Natalie Crawford
24 The “Lost Years” or a “Decade of Progress”?: African American Writers and the Second World War 403Vaughn Rasberry
25 Ethiopia in the Verse of the Late Harlem Renaissance 423Nadia Nurhussein
26 Mapping the Harlem Renaissance in the Americas 441Michael Soto
27 Virtual Harlem: Experiencing the New Negro Renaissance 457Bryan Carter
Index 473