English 308im - Seminar: One Big Book-Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man from Jim Crow to Black Lives Matter
Sem: T-Invisible Man
Fall
2022
01
4.00
Torleif Persson
TH 1:20 PM - 4:00 PM
Smith College
ENG-308im-01-202301
Seelye 105
tpersson@smith.edu
Ralph Ellison’s groundbreaking Invisible Man (1952) occupies a central position for thinking about America and the American novel. In this seminar, we will trace Ellison’s influence as a writer and public intellectual, from Jim Crow to Black Lives Matter. We will begin by identifying Invisible Man’s central themes, metaphors, and narrative strategies in the context of the historical moment in which it appeared. We will then look at moments in which Ellison’s novel—and his most important essays—have come to mediate major postwar debates about race, integration, democracy, and art. We will conclude by reading Percival Everett’s Erasure (2001), a contemporary re-writing of Invisible Man.
[CE] JR/SR only