African American Literature
Academic, scholarly, and critical articles on African American poets, playwrights, and novelists of the twentieth century, including writers of the early century, the Harlem Renaissance writers, Beat poets, and contemporary African American writers. All articles are open access and free.
main page | 20th century poetry | authors, alphabetical | 19th century authors | postcolonial literature
Fisher, Dexter and Robert B. Stepto. A review of Afro-American Literature: The Reconstruction of Instruction. "The Birth of a Black New Criticism." Reviewed by John Edgar Tidwell in Callaloo, No. 7 (Oct., 1979), pp. 109-112
Gates, H.L. Negroes Old, Negroes New: On Afro-American Modernism. Gates discusses the history of the African-American anthology in connection with Chant of Saints: A Gathering of Afro-American Literature, Art, and Scholarship , ed. Michael S. Harper and Robert B. Stepto. In ADE Bulletin 064 (May 1980): 34-36
Gates, H.L., and Nellie McKay (eds.) A discussion with the general editors of the Norton Anthology of African American Literature on the PBS Newshour, March 5, 1997
Harris, Trudier. A review of South of Tradition: Essays on African American Literature. (Univ. of Georgia Press, 2002.) Reviewed in College Literature, Winter 2005 by Williams, Jessica
Harris, Trudier. Publisher's page for From Mammies to Militants: Domestics in Black American Literature (Temple Univ. Press, 1982)
McKay, Nellie. "African American Literature: Past, Present, Future" A forum on the PBS Newshour, Tuesday, March 18, 1997
Documenting the American South, an extensive online, searchable collection of material from the Univ. of North Carolina Chapel Hill library
The Antislavery Literature Project on the eserver, Univ. of Iowa
The Race and Ethnicity Collection on the eserver, Univ. of Iowa, contains reference material, essays, and other material on race and ethnicity in the United States
A PBS presentation on African American literature includes text and video clips, and covers writers from slavery times, through the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement, and includes a chapter on photographer Gordon Parks
"Africans in America: America's Journey Through Slavery." From a PBS series, October 1998, includes a teacher's guide
Teaching resources for Black History month from publisher Gale Group has biographies of over 50 African Americans and other teaching materials
An list of web resources for African American writers and literature, from the Bluefield (W. Va.) State College library
An extensive list of "best of the web" sites on African Americans, from "Digital Librarian"
Article on Alain Locke (September 13, 1886 - June 10, 1954), who played an important role in identifying, nurturing, and publishing the works of young black artists during the New Negro Movement. Includes secondary bibliography. From the Washington, DC Library
Historical Overviews of The Black Arts Movement, by Kaluma ya Salaam, at Modern American Poetry (Univ. of Ill.)
Selected Bibliography Of Afro-American Literature, compiled by Jerry W. Ward, Jr., Tougaloo College. ADE Bulletin (MLA) 078 (Summer 1984)
African-American Literature to 1925: A Short Selected Secondary. From Dr. Donna Campbell
Primary and secondary reading list for African American literature from a University of Leeds class on African American texts
Reading list for PhD exam in African American Literature from Univ. of North Carolina Chapel Hill
1998-2008 by Donna Jan Pridmore