Of all the images to arise from the Harlem Renaissance, the most thought-provoking were those of the mulatta. This title investigates the visual and literary images of black femininity that occurred between the two world wars. It highlights the centrality of the mulatta by examining arguments about race in the Harlem Renaissance.

This book expands the discourse on the Harlem Renaissance into more recent crucial areas for literary scholars, college instructors, graduate students, upper-level undergraduates, and Harlem Renaissance aficionados. These selected essays, authored by mostly new critics in Harlem Renaissance studies, address critical discourse in race, cultural studies, feminist studies, identity politics, queer theory, and rhetoric and pedagogy. While some canonical writers are included, such as Langston Hughes and Alain Locke, others such as Dorothy West, Jessie Fauset, and Wallace Thurman have equal footing. Illustrations from several books and journals help demonstrate the vibrancy of this era. Australia Tarver is Associate Professor of English at Texas Christian University. Paula C. Barnes is an Associate Professor of English at Hampton University.

The Harlem Renaissance, the period associated with the flowering of the arts in Harlem, inaugurated a tradition of African American children's literature, for the movement's central writers made youth both their subject and audience. W.E.B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, Langston Hughes, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and other Harlem Renaissance figures took an impassioned interest in the literary models offered to children, believing that the ""New Negro"" would ultimately arise from black youth. As a result African American children's literature became a crucial medium through which a disparate community forged bonds of cultural, economic, and aesthetic solidarity. Kate Capshaw Smith explores the period's vigorous exchange about the nature and identity of black childhood and uncovers the networks of African American philosophers, community activists, schoolteachers, and literary artists who worked together to transmit black history and culture to the next generation.

This groundbreaking study explores the Harlem Renaissance as a literary phenomenon fundamentally shaped by same-sex-interested men. Christa Schwarz focuses on Counte Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Richard Bruce Nugent and explores these writers' sexually dissident or gay literary voices. The portrayals of men-loving-men in these writers' works vary significantly. Schwarz locates in the poetry of Cullen, Hughes, and McKay the employment of contemporary gay code words, deriving from the Greek discourse of homosexuality and from Walt Whitman. By contrast, Nugent--the only ""out"" gay Harlem Renaissance artist--portrayed men-loving-men without reference to racial concepts or Whitmanesque codes. Schwarz argues for contemporary readings attuned to the complex relation between race, gender, and sexual orientation in Harlem Renaissance writing.

Spoofing the Modern is the first book devoted solely to studying the role satire played in the movement known as the "New Negro," or Harlem, Renaissance from 1919 to 1940. As the first era in which African American writers and artists enjoyed frequent access to and publicity from major New York-based presses, the Harlem Renaissance helped the talents, concerns, and criticisms of African Americans to reach a wider audience in the 1920s and 1930s. These writers and artists joined a growing chorus of modernity that frequently resonated in the caustic timbre of biting satire and parody. The Harlem Renaissance was simultaneously the first major African American literary movement of the twentieth century and the first major blooming of satire by African Americans. Such authors as folklorist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, poet Langston Hughes, journalist George S. Schuyler, writer-editor-poet Wallace Thurman, physician Rudolph Fisher, and artist Richard Bruce Nugent found satire an attractive means to criticize not only American racism, but also the trials of American culture careening toward modernity. Frequently, they directed their satiric barbs toward each other, lampooning the painful processes through which African American artists struggled with modernity, often defined by fads and superficial understandings of culture. Dickson-Carr argues that these satirists provided the Harlem Renaissance with much of its most incisive cultural criticism. The book opens by analyzing the historical, political, and cultural circumstances that allowed for the "New Negro" in general and African American satire in particular to flourish in the 1920s. Each subsequent chapter then introduces the major satirists within the larger movement by placing each author's career in a broader cultural context, including those authors who shared similar views. Spoofing the Modern concludes with an overview that demonstrates how Harlem Renaissance authors influenced later cultural and literary movements.

Celebrated scholar Carla Kaplan's cultural biography, Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance, focuses on white women, collectively called "Miss Anne," who became Harlem Renaissance insiders. The 1920s in New York City was a time of freedom, experimentation, and passion--with Harlem at the epicenter. White men could go uptown to see jazz and modern dance, but women who embraced black culture too enthusiastically could be ostracized. Miss Anne in Harlem focuses on six of the unconventional, free-thinking women, some from Manhattan high society, many Jewish, who crossed race lines and defied social conventions to become a part of the culture and heartbeat of Harlem. Ethnic and gender studies professor Carla Kaplan brings the interracial history of the Harlem Renaissance to life with vivid prose, extensive research, and period photographs.

Examining the political, economic, and social environment, as well as the artistic and cultural events of the Harlem Renaissance, these two volumes present some 625 entries, including essays on major (and some lesser known) writers, artists, and performers; discussions of creative works, especially those which had an impact on the development of the Harlem Renaissance; information about individuals who predate the Harlem Renaissance, but whose works were influential (e.g. Paul Laurence Dunbar and Henry Ossawa Tanner); and issues of race, including the emergence of the struggle for civil rights, the anticolonial movement, and the role of whites in the Harlem Renaissance. Entries covering individuals include participants in the creative arts as well as journalists, political and cultural figures, and others who were simply personalities in Harlem; those on creative works include books, anthologies, plays, films, musical shows or reviews, and significant newspapers, literary magazines, and periodicals. There are also entries covering artistic and cultural organizations such as the Negro Art Institute, businesses such as the Afro-American Realty Company and the Black Swan Phonograph Company, and political and civil rights groups. Finally, a number of thematic and interpretive essays provide general overviews of specific areas such as music, literature, and the visual arts. Entries are cross-referenced and include resources for further reading; some include a b&w photograph. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

"More than 800 concise, A-to-Z entries detail the historical relevance of the subject and explain how the writer, work, or idea helped shape American literature. The author draws on historical studies, biographies, literary criticism, and primary materials, including letters and diaries of such Harlem Renaissance figures as Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, W. E. B. DuBois, and Zora Neale Hurston.

This alphabetical reference contains approximately 370 entries covering the emergence of new ideas in political thought, civil rights, racial pride, and the arts during New York City's Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s. Ranging from several paragraphs to several pages in length, the cross-referenced entries include people, places, and institutions such as Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Louis Armstrong, Apollo Theatre, Gwendolyn Brooks, Abyssinian Baptist Church, Regina Andrews, and Marcus Garvey. The reference includes a chronology, a glossary of slang, maps, and some 100 black and white photographs. Aberjhani and West are both experienced writers and editors who have published nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

The Harlem Renaissance (1918-1937) was the most influential single movement in African American literary history. Its key figures include W. E. B. Du Bois, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, and Langston Hughes. The movement laid the groundwork for all later African American literature, and had an enormous impact on later black literature world-wide. With chapters by a wide range of well-known scholars, this 2007 Companion is an authoritative and engaging guide to the movement. It first discusses the historical contexts of the Harlem Renaissance, both national and international; then presents original discussions of a wide array of authors and texts; and finally treats the reputation of the movement in later years. Giving full play to the disagreements and differences that energized the renaissance, this Companion presents a set of new readings encouraging further exploration of this dynamic field.