Visualizing Blackness and the Creation of the African American Literary Tradition (Paperback)

Introduction: the trope of the picture book; Part I. Sights of Instruction: 1. Witnessing moral authority in pre-abolition literature; 2. Picturing education and labor in Washington and Du Bois; 3. Gazing upon plastic art in the Harlem Renaissance; Part II. Lessons from the Museum: 4. Zora Neale Hurston: seeing by the rules of the Natural History Museum; 5. Melvin Tolson: gaining modernist perspective in the art gallery; 6. Ralph Ellison: engaging racial perception beyond museum walls; Coda: redefining the look of American character.