Harlem Renaissance 1919-1940
A selective list of online articles on the Harlem Renaissance, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the MLA Guidelines for Web Sites
main page | African American writers | African American literature | twentieth-century literature
Introduction, Background, Cultural & Historical
African American Odyssey, an online exhibit from the Library of Congress with pictures of original documents and commentary, with sections on Slavery; Free Blacks in the Antebellum Period; Abolition; The Civil War; Reconstruction; Booker T. Washington Era; World War I and Postwar Society; the Great Depression, New Deal, and World War II; Civil Rights
Web site on the African-American Community in Harlem 1900-1940 from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library
On Alain Locke, from the Heath Anthology of Literature
A brief guide to the Harlem Renaissance from the Academy of American Poets
Reprint of the influential Survey Graphic Harlem Number, from 1925 which includes articles on the new scene in Harlem as of 1925, by many names associated with the Harlem Renaissance. A project of the Univ. of Virginia electronic text center
An introduction to the Harlem Renaissance and library materials on the Harlem Renaissance in the British Library, by Jean Kemble, 1997
The Black Renaissance in Washington, 1920-1930s contains biographies of 26 important African Americans and book lists (removed from www.dclibrary.org)
Literary Criticism
Anderson, Paul Allen. A review of Deep River: Music and Memory in Harlem Renaissance Thought. (Duke Univ. Press, 2001) Reviewer Eric Porter writes "In this important book, Paul Allen Anderson explores the development of ideas about black music during a period that witnessed its growing visibility and impact on American culture and society." African American Review, Spring, 2003
Barnes, Paula C., ed. Publisher's site for New Voices on the Harlem Renaissance: Essays on Race, Gender, and Literary Discourse (Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, 2005)
Butler, Robert. A review of Butler's Contemporary African American Fiction: The Open Journey (1998). Covers Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Native Son (1940), Invisible Man (1952), The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), Faith and the Good Thing (1974), Flight to Canada (1976), Song of Solomon (1977), and Dessa Rose (1986); and Parable of the Sower (1993). According to the reviewer, "in traveling again over the familiar terrain of these nine more or less canonical works, Robert Butler produces something of considerable value for understanding contemporary, as well as the last century's, writing, namely, a challenge to older interpretations of African American narrative informed by a revised conception of how literary tradition is formed in kinship and difference." In African American Review, Winter, 2000 reviewed by John M. Reilly
Dawahare, Anthony. "The Specter of Radicalism in Alain Locke's The New Negro." In Left of the Color Line, Bill Mullen, James Edward Smethurst (UNC Press, 2003). Preview at Google Books.
Fabre, Geneviève and Michel Feith. Publisher's site for Temples for Tomorrow: Looking Back at the Harlem Renaissance (Indiana Univ.Press, 2001). An international perspective on the Harlem Renaissance.
Gallego, Mar. A review of Passing Novels in the Harlem Renaissance: Identity, Politics and Textual Strategies. (Hamburg: Lit Verlag Munster, 2003) Reviewed in African American Review, Winter, 2004 by Zhou Yupei
Gosselin, Adrienne Johnson. "Beyond the Harlem Renaissance: The Case for Black Modernist Writers." Says that "American literary history views the Harlem Renaissance as an aesthetic movement contemporaneous with, but separate from, Euro-American Modernism," recommends theorizing American modernism. Modern Language Studies
Smith, Katharine Capshaw. Children's Literature of the Harlem Renaissance (Indiana Univ. Press, 2004). Preview at Google Books.
Tarver, Australia. New Voices on the Harlem Renaissance: Essays on Race, Gender, and Literary Discourse (2006). [Locke, Alain LeRoy] Preview at Google Books.
A PBS roundtable on the Harlem Renaissance poses several provocative questions to participants Jeffrey C. Stewart, George Mason University; William Drummond, Univ of California at Berkeley; and Richard Powell, Duke University, 2/20/98
Janken, Kenneth R. On the importance of Europe and especially France in African American intellectual life between the two world wars. "African American and Francophone black intellectuals during the Harlem Renaissance," in Historian, Spring, 1998 (removed from findarticles.com)
Musser, Judith. "African American Women's Short Stories in the Harlem Renaissance: Bridging a Tradition." On stories originally published in The Crisis and Opportunity. MELUS, Summer, 1998 (removed)
Stuart, Andrea. "The Harlem Renaissance in the twenties produced a wealth of black talent. But what was its legacy and who did it really benefit?" New Statesman, June 27, 1997 (removed)
Francini, Antonella. "Sonnet vs. Sonnet." On the development of the sonnet by Harlem Renaissance poets. In RSA 14 (2003) (removed from http://www.aisna.net)
Yarborough, Richard. "In the Realm of the Imagination": Afro-American Literature and the American Canon," in ADE Bulletin (MLA) 078 (Summer 1984): 35-39 (removed by MLA)
Bibliographies & Teaching Resources
List of recommended books on Literature and Race Relations, from the American Association of University Presses
Soto, Michael, ed. Publisher's site for Teaching the Harlem Renaissance: Course Design and Classroom Strategies (Peter Lang, 2008)
A very extensive bibliographic listing of Harlem Renaissance resources, from Collaborative Bibliographies at Georgetown Univ.
Teaching resources for Black History month from the Gale Group has biographies of over 50 African Americans and other teaching materials
Peterson, Bernard L. Early Black American playwrights and dramatic writers: a biographical directory and catalog of plays, films, and broadcasting scripts (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990). Preview at Google Books.
Guide to the Federal Theatre Project Playscript and Radioscript Collection in the Special Collections and Archives of George Mason Univ.
Web site for The Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD), an interdisciplinary association of scholars studying the dispersal of people of African descent throughout the world.
Authors
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1998-2009 by Jan Pridmore