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This book analyzes twenty-first century African American fiction through the proliferation of post categories that arose in the new millennium. These post categories—post-black, post-racialism, post-Soul—articulate a shift away from the racial aesthetics associated with the Black Arts Movement and argue for the individual agency of Black artists over the meaning of racial identity in their work. Analyzing key works by Colson Whitehead, Alice Randall, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Paul Beatty, Jesmyn Ward, and Kiese Laymon, this book argues that twenty-first century African American fiction highlights the push and pull between claims of post-civil rights progress and the recognition of the entrenchment of structural racism. The book contextualizes this shift through the rise of, and presidency of, Barack Obama and the revision of Du Boisian double consciousness. It examines Obama through an analysis of the discourse surrounding his rise, Obama’s own writings, and his appearance as a character. The book concludes that while the claims of progress associated with Barack Obama’s presidency and the post era categories to which it was connected were overly optimistic, they represent a major shift towards an individualistic conception of racial identity that continues to resist claims of responsibility imposed on Black artists.

Global migration is more pronounced than it has ever been while issues concerning immigration are constantly in the news. Yet answers as to why remain few and far between. Conscripts of Migration: Neoliberal Globalization, Nationalism, and theLiterature of New African Diasporas intersects black Atlantic, postcolonial, and queer diaspora studies to answer these increasingly crucial questions regarding crises of immigration by rethinking migration historically and globally. From histories of racial capitalism, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and imperialism to contemporary neoliberal globalization and the resurgence of xenophobic nationalism, countries in the Global North continue to devastate and destabilize the global South. Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, in different ways, police the effects of their own global policies at their borders. This book uses the term conscription as a way to understand the political and economic systems that undergird contemporary immigration and its colonial histories while providing the first substantial study of a new body of contemporary African diasporic literature: migritude. Authors like FatouDiome, Shailja Patel, Nadifa Mohamed, Diriye Osman and others, address vital issues of migrancy, diaspora, global refugee crises, racism against immigrants, identity, gender, sexuality, resurgent nationalisms, and neoliberal globalization.

Juan Francisco Manzano and Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés (also known as Plácido) were perhaps the most important and innovative Cuban writers of African descent during the Spanish colonial era.Both nineteenth-century authors used Catholicism as a symbolic language for African-inspired spirituality.Likewise, Plácido and Manzano subverted the popular imagery of Neoclassicism and Romanticism in order to envision black freedom in the tradition of the Haitian Revolution.African religious knowledge subverted official Catholic dogma about redemptive suffering that might free the soul but leave the body enchained.Rather, Plácido and Manzano envisioned emancipation through the lens of African spirituality, which constituted a transformative moment in the history of Cuban letters. Matthew Pettway examines how the portrayal of African ideas of spirit and cosmos in otherwise conventional texts recur throughout early Cuban literature and became the basis for Manzano and Plácido’s antislavery philosophy.Cuban debates about freedom and selfhood were never the exclusive domain of the white Creole elite.Pettway’s emphasis on African-inspired spirituality as a source of knowledge and a means to sacred authority for black Cuban writers deepens our understanding of Manzano and Plácido not as mere imitators but as aesthetic and political pioneers.

This book is the first full-length critical study of any British girls’ comic and sheds light on an often-ignored era and genre of the comics industry. It explores the production and reception of the notorious girls’ mystery comic Misty (IPC, 1978-80), considering its influences, themes, visuals, plots, and use of Gothic symbols. Containing exclusive interview material with the comic’s creators and editorial team, rare scripts and photographs, and surveying the entire archive of Misty stories, it preserves and analyzesMisty for fans and scholars. By exploring and defining the particular type of mystery and fear that this comic offered, the strange case of Misty also becomes a tool to develop existing Gothic scholarship and identify a new and under-theorised subgenre. Gothic for Girls challenges and instructs its readers in a number of ways: offering warnings and moral lessons, exposing societal expectations and limitations, and embracing the liminality and Otherness of childhood.

This books engages with studies on Romanticism and on monsters in order to map out the heritage, functions, and affects of good monsters in contemporary comics and graphic novels. It shows how Romantic inclinations and themes are continued through comics monsters that question the distinction between human and monster, self and other. Taking as its point of departure Romantic artists such as Goya and Blake and protagonists such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein's monster as well as figurations of the trickster and Baudelairian ennui, the book gleans recurrent Romantic features that are then drawn out through monstrous protagonists in English- and French-language comics: dark romantic predilection for ruins and the sordid, the solitary protagonist, his quest, nostalgia, the prominence of the spectacle, excessive emotions, and above all, the characters' ambiguity and rebelliousness. In addition to insights from studies on comics, monsters, and Romanticism, the book also engages with the concepts of the imaginary, presence, and remediation. In blurring the otherness of the monster, these protagonists retain the exaggeration and uncontrollability of all monsters while incorporating Romantic elements and thus exemplifying the continuation of one of the most significant transformations of Western consciousness. Each theme is highlighted through close readings of well-known but often overlooked comics: Enki Bilal's Monstretetralogy, Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run, Mike Mignola'sHellboy, and James O'Barr'sThe Crow.

The Order and the Other is a call to reexamine the relationship between dystopian literature and science fiction by thinking about the work that each genre does on and for the reader. The author believes that this is especially necessary in regards to dystopian literature intended for adolescents. Now that the cultural boom of YA Dystopian texts is over, this book attempts to understand that boom by placing dystopian works into the larger context of belonging to literary history of dystopian works. It attempts to help readers see how surveillance and power form the way that not only the characters within the films or books think about themselves, but also how it shapes the readers, as well. It also helps show that the surveillance culture and state that we see within such texts is not dependent on science fiction genre structures to exist. Finally, the book examines the most recent efforts to understand the genre and suggests ways inquiry into the genre might go forward.

Representations of southern poor whites have long shifted between romanticization and demonization. At worst, poor southern whites are aligned with racism, bigotry, and right-wing extremism, and at best, regarded as the passive victims of wider, socio-economic policies. Poverty Politics: Poor Whites in Contemporary Southern Writing pushes beyond these stereotypes and explores the impact of neoliberalism and welfare reform on depictions of poverty. The book examines representations of southern poor whites across various types of literature, including travel-writing, photo-narratives, life-writing, and eco-literature, and reveals a common interest in communitarianism that crosses the boundaries of the US South and regionalism, moving past ideas about the culture of poverty to examine the economics of poverty. Included are critical examinations of the writings of southern writers such as Dorothy Allison, Rick Bragg, Barbara Kingsolver, Tim McLaurin, Toni Morrison, and Ann Pancake. Poverty Politics: Poor Whites in Contemporary Southern Writing includes critical engagement with identity politics as well as reflecting on issues including Hurricane Katrina, the 2008 financial crisis, and mountaintop removal. It interrogates the presumed opposition between the Global North and the Global South and engages with micro-regions through case studies on Appalachian photo-narratives and eco-literature. Importantly, it focuses not merely on representations of southern poor whites, but also on writing that calls for alternative ways of re-conceptualizing not just the poor, but societal measures of time, value, and worth.

The story of comics is also the story of the modern city. Visible Cities, Global Comics thus makes urban contribution to an interdisciplinary phase in comics studies. Striking a balance between descriptive, historical, analytical and theoretical modes, Fraser’s research monograph explores representations of the city in a selection of comics from across the globe. First, this book brings insights from urban theory to bear on specific comics texts; and second, it uses comics texts to elucidate themes of urbanism, architecture, planning and the cultures of cities in works from the 18^th through the 21^st centuries. Throughout, close readings of comics by artists from a range of locations—Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, England, France, Holland, Japan, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, the United States, and Uruguay—contribute to an exploration of larger urban themes. Chapters include “The Modern City Streets” (ch. 1), “The Passions of Everyday Urban Life” (ch. 2), “Urban Planning, Built Environment and the Structure of Cities” (ch. 3), “Architecture, Materiality and the Tactile City” (ch. 4), and “Danger, Disease and Death in the Graphic Urban Imagination” (ch. 5). Fraser’s writing presumes no previous knowledge of either urban theory or the ninth art. Readers are introduced to names, places, historical events, urban thinkers, and formal elements of the comics medium with which they may not be familiar. In the process, each chapter introduces readers to specific comics artists and texts and investigates a range of matters pertaining to the medium’s spatial form, stylistic variation, and cultural prominence.