African American Studies

This reference text represents the voices of the era in poetry and prose, in full or excerpted from anecdotes, editorials, essays, manifestoes, orations, and reminiscences, with appearances by major figures and often overlooked contributors to the Harlem Renaissance. It carries readers from the opening of the Harlem Renaissance, which began at the top of the 20th century, to its heights in the 1920s and '30s and through to its artistic and literary echoes in the shadows of World War II (1939-1945).

A book which brings together the work of Black artists in the USA, who came to prominence in the 1920s. The visual artists of the Harlem Renaissance made their own contributions to the excitement of Black America's great cultural awakening.

The Harlem Renaissance was the most influential single movement in African American history. The movement laid the groundwork for subsequent African American literature, and had an enormous impact on later black art world-wide. In its attention to a wide range of genres and this book seeks to analyze the eclecticism of Harlem Renaissance cultural expression.

Gathering a representative sampling of the New Negro Movement's most important figures, and providing substantial introductory essays, headnotes, and brief biographical notes, Lewis' volume--organized chronologically--includes the poetry and prose of Sterling Brown, Countee Cullen, W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, and others.

Rhapsodies in Black takes a fresh look at the Harlem Renaissance, recognizing it as a historical moment of global significance, with connections to Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and other parts of the United States, in particular Chicago and the Deep South. In Harlem, as in Paris and Berlin, artists were inspired to seek new forms and to collaborate on performances, films, and publications. Rhapsodies in Black speaks across the arts, reaching out from an exploration of the painters and sculptors of the time to consider film, theater, and dance.