Cosmopolitan Poetics of the Harlem Renaissance

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25884060
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: Literature in English
• Research Institution: Senshu University
• Principal Investigator: SAKUMA Yuri 専修大学, 経営学部, 講師 (90712646)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-08-30 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: アメリカ文学 / 黒人文学 / 人種 / コスモポリタニズム / ハーレム・ルネサンス

Outline of Final Research Achievements

It is generally believed that African American literature is largely about race and racial experience. Therefore, critics have traditionally approached African American literature by emphasizing such key themes as racial segregation and violence, the legacies of slavery, and the Great Migration.
Recently, however, critics have started to explore African American texts that do not necessarily address racial issues in either their style or their content, and have instead attempted to explore the cosmopolitan diversity of American experience as represented in works by African Americans . Through close readings of African American works that do not directly address racial issues, this study aims to highlight the diversity of African American literature in the 1920s, focusing specifically on the writers of the Harlem Renaissance and arguing that cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism are important parts of the philosophical foundation of the Harlem Renaissance.

Free Research Field

アメリカ文学