Please join the United States Literatures & Cultures Consortium for a chapter workshop and discussion with
Konstantina Karageorgos
PhD Candidate in English
Monday, February 24
3241 Angell Hall
4:10-5:30pm
"Richard Wright's Marxism: The Outsider and the Making of a Postwar Aesthetic"
“Richard Wright’s Marxism: The Outsider and the Making of a Postwar Aesthetic” is the second consecutive chapter on Richard Wright in my dissertation, Beyond the Blueprint: Episodes of African-American Literary Marxism in the Period of the Cold War. Mobilized by a provocative claim—that Wright became a Marxist only after leaving the Communist Party—this chapter revisits the thirteen year interim between Native Son (1940) and The Outsider (1953), during which time Wright shifted his focus away from political and cultural Marxism to the principle texts of Marx’s thought. By recovering this lost period in Wright’s Marxist evolution, I restore a pivotal context to The Outsider, Wright’s most misunderstood novel, which reopens his postwar work to fresh political, theoretical, and formal readings.
Snacks provided!
Drafts are available for download at the USist website:
Please email Kathryne Bevilacqua (bevilacq@umich.edu) with any questions about this event.
