CRITICISM

Boeckmann, Cathy. A Question of Character: Scientific Racism and the Genres of American Fiction, 1892-1912. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2000, 238 p.

Study of racial theory in historical context with reference to the works of such writers as Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Charles Chestnutt, and James Weldon Johnson.

Brian, Cheyette. “White Skin, Black Masks.” In Cultural Readings of Imperialism: Edward Said and the Gravity of History, edited by Keith Ansell-Pearson, Benita Parry, and Judith Squires, pp. 106-26. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1997.

Examines and questions the claims of anti-Semitism and a historically-fixed view of the Jew as Other in the writings of Eliot and Fanon.

Crownshaw, Richard. “Blacking out Holocaust Memory in Saul Bellow's The Victim.” Saul Bellow Journal 16-17, no. 2-2 (2000-2001): 215-52.

Explores points of connection and intersection between racism against Blacks and anti-Semitism in the United States, using Bellow's The Victim as a case study.

Frenk, Joachim, and Christian Krug. “A Passage to India: The Deceptively Simple Present.” Zeitschrift fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik 46, no. 1 (1998): 38-51.

Offers a detailed study of Forester's narrative technique in A Passage to India, noting that his use of a second narrative voice conveys imperialistic and racist sentiments that are attacked in the novel as a whole.

LeSeur, Geta. “‘Read Your History, Man’: Bridging Racism, Paternalism, and Privilege in Paule Marshall's The Chosen Place, The Timeless People.” CLA Journal 44, no. 1 (September 2000): 88-110.

Examines Marshall's chief work in terms of her exhortation to understand the past as a means of controlling the present and the future.

Margolis, Stacey. “Huckleberry Finn; or, Consequences.” PMLA 116, no. 2 (March 2001): 329-43.

Analyzes Twain's exploration of “unintentional harm” toward African Americans in Huckleberry Finn and discusses the ramifications of this approach for antebellum American readers.

McGuinness, Martin J. “Invisible Man in Saul Bellow's The Dean's December.” Saul Bellow Journal 16-17, no. 2-2 (2000-01): 16-17.

Discusses Bellow's treatment of self-conscious “goodness” and “the right sort of thinking” regarding racism, as defined by a fictional liberal intellectual community in modern America.

Samuels, Robert. Writing Prejudices: The Psychoanalysis and Pedagogy of Discrimination from Shakespeare to Toni Morrison. Albany: State University of New York, 2001, 196 p.

Examines several works of literature, from Othello to Beloved, in the context of linguistic codes used to create racism.

Schroeder, Patricia R. “Transforming Images of Blackness: Dramatic Representation, Women Playwrights, and the Harlem Renaissance.” In Crucibles of Crisis: Performing Social Change, edited by Janelle Reinelt, pp. 107-22. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996.

Explores the treatment of race in the plays of Angelina Weld Grimké and Shirley Graham.

Üsekes, Çigdem. “‘You Always under Attack’: Whiteness as Law and Terror in August Wilson's Twentieth-Century Cycle of Plays.” American Drama 10, no. 2 (summer 2001): 48-68.

Focuses on Wilson's association of whiteness with racism and legal persecution in his plays.