Role of W.E.B Du Bois in the Afro-American Cultural Politics and the Harlem Renaissance

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Divesh Kaul
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Harlem Renaissance ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
The Harlem Renaissance

scholarly journals Queer Harlem, Queer Tashkent: Langston Hughes's “Boy Dancers of Uzbekistan”

Slavic Review ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 637-646
Author(s):  
Jennifer Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Black Community ◽  
Harlem Renaissance ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Communities Of Color ◽  
Male Dancers ◽  
The Harlem Renaissance

In Langston Hughes's 1934 essay “Boy Dancers of Uzbekistan,” (published inTravelmagazine), the author writes mournfully about the Soviet reforms that put an end to the practice of effeminized male dancers,bachi, performing in the teahouses of Central Asia for exclusively male audiences; in doing so, Hughes expresses an enthusiasm for the queer contours of thebachitradition. This article connects that enthusiasm with Hughes's earlier involvement in cultural efforts aimed at increasing queer visibility within the black community during the Harlem Renaissance. By situating “Boy Dancers” in this context, the underexplored role of the Russian Revolution in fostering queer solidarity among global communities of color is highlighted.

Morality and Art

Dangerous Art ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 9-24
Author(s):  
James Harold
Keyword(s):  
Harlem Renaissance ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Harlem Renaissance

This chapter sets out the main questions to be explored more fully in the chapters to follow. It does this by studying three well-known debates about morality and art: from classical China, the debate between Mozi and Xunzi about the value of music; from ancient Greece, the difference between Plato and Aristotle over poetry; and from the Harlem Renaissance, the argument between W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain LeRoy Locke over the value of art as propaganda. The chapter concludes by showing that the problem of morality and art has three main parts: the morality of the artist; the effects of art on the audience; and the relationship between art and moral knowledge. The chapter also serves to set out some arguments and positions that are made use of later in the book.

scholarly journals Harlem Renaissance Literary Productions: Context, Role, Philosophy and Objective In “The Negro’s Tragedy”

2020 ◽  
pp. 159-203
Author(s):  
Beugre Zouankouan Stéphane
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Harlem Renaissance ◽  
Literary Movement ◽  
American Writer ◽  
Claude Mckay ◽  
Hermeneutic Approach ◽  
Black Movement ◽  
Poetic Creation ◽  
The Harlem Renaissance

This paper aims to show and analyze how through “an outstanding poetic creation”, Claude McKay describes clearly the context, role, philosophy and objective of the Harlem Renaissance literary productions while describing his own role and vocation as an African American writer. Indeed by describing his own role as a pioneer of the Harlem Renaissance Movement, “this assertive poem” is actually a précis and paradigm of the motives and chart gathering all those black pioneer writers engaged in this literary movement. This paper provides, through the hermeneutic study of this symptomatic sonnet about the Negro’s tragedy; an analysis of the context in which the Harlem Renaissance literary productions had been produced, the role of those literary productions, the main philosophy surrounding the literary productions of this Black Movement and finally the objective targeted by those literary productions. The hermeneutic approach is sustained by the socio-criticism, African American criticisms and stylistics theories to better characterize the semantic and social scope of this poem.  

A Primitivism of the Senses

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Cook
Keyword(s):  
Harlem Renaissance ◽  
Direct Relationship ◽  
South Pacific ◽  
Experimental Film ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Strong Concern ◽  
The Harlem Renaissance

This chapter examines the aesthetically and conceptually central role of music in the film work of Len Lye. Lye’s first film, Tusalava, exhibits a strong concern with notions of the “primitive”, both visually and musically. While Lye abandoned that film’s African and South Pacific influences in his work of the 1930s, his use of jazz is here understood to continue those same concerns. This is considered both in his direct relationship with the Harlem Renaissance and in that movement’s dissemination internationally, as well as with an underlying conceptualisation of primitive perception. His work is in many ways experimental, while also being entwined with traditions normally excluded or ignored when studying “experimental film”. This chapter’s findings bring into question the very boundaries and definitions of that category.

The Princess Steel

PMLA ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 130 (3) ◽  
pp. 819-829 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. E. B. Du Bois ◽  
Adrienne Brown ◽  
Britt Rusert
Keyword(s):  
Harlem Renaissance ◽  
Social Revolution ◽  
Industrial Capitalism ◽  
Genre Fiction ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
The Many ◽  
First Time ◽  
Fiction Writer ◽  
The Harlem Renaissance

In his 1926 essay “criteria of negro art,” W. E. B. Du Bois famously argued that “all art is propaganda and ever must be” (296). Du Bois's reputation as a fiction writer has long suffered because of his unwavering commitment to the propagandistic function of art. The Harlem Renaissance writer Wallace Thurman's 1928 claim that “the artist in him has been stifled in order that the propagandist may survive” (219) would be echoed for decades by critics who continued to view Du Bois's fiction as overly didactic, “insignificant and pallid” (Rigsby i), and bafflingly eccentric. Recently scholars have begun to reverse this disparagement while excavating how Du Bois used fiction to test out and amplify his developing philosophical and sociological positions over the many decades of his career. Du Bois's fantasy story “The Princess Steel,” published for the first time here, provides another opportunity to consider Du Bois as a writer of fiction as well as an enthusiastic reader of genre fiction. This addition to the growing archive of Du Bois's fiction illuminates his use of speculative romance to explain not only the pitfalls of industrial capitalism but also the romantic possibilities of social revolution.

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