The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s / Edition 1

by James Smethurst

Overview

Emerging from a matrix of Old Left, black nationalist, and bohemian ideologies and institutions, African American artists and intellectuals in the 1960s coalesced to form the Black Arts Movement, the cultural wing of the Black Power Movement. In this comprehensive analysis, James Smethurst examines the formation of the Black Arts Movement and demonstrates how it deeply influenced the production and reception of literature and art in the United States through its negotiations of the ideological climate of the Cold War, decolonization, and the civil rights movement.

Taking a regional approach, Smethurst examines local expressions of the nascent Black Arts Movement, a movement distinctive in its geographical reach and diversity, while always keeping the frame of the larger movement in view. The Black Arts Movement, he argues, fundamentally changed American attitudes about the relationship between popular culture and "high" art and dramatically transformed the landscape of public funding for the arts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807855980
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	05/09/2005
Series:	The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture
Edition description:	1
Pages:	488
Sales rank:	179,872
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.09(d)

About the Author

James Edward Smethurst is associate professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He is author of The New Red Negro: The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930-1946 and coeditor of Left of the Color Line: Race, Radicalism, and Twentieth-Century Literature of the United States.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

A momentous and singular contribution to the study of literary ethnic nationalism in particular, and post-World War II cultural history in general. Anyone interested in United States culture and politics in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s will be drawn to The Black Arts Movement as a chronicle, survey, and fabulous reference.—Alan Wald, University of Michigan

Editorial Reviews

A richly insightful and informative account of the often occluded racial dynamics of early modernism.—Journal of American Studies

From the Publisher