Date of Award
8-6-2024
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Type
Dissertation
Abstract
Studies of left-wing U.S. literature have long focused on the role of race in radical texts. However, scholars have rarely analyzed intertextual connections between Black and white radical literatures before 1919. Barbara Foley points to the “Red Summer” of that year, when anti-Black violence broke out in tandem with state suppression of leftists, as the start of interracial literary radicalism. Similarly, Paul Heideman’s collection of Black radical writing includes no selections from Black leftists before the 1910s. Were Black and white radical literary cultures virtually segregated until World War I, as Cedric J. Robinson suggests? My dissertation, Bleeding Heartland: Race, Region, and Radicalism in Midwest Print Culture, 1877–1939, argues that textual exchange among Black and white revolutionaries developed from the 1870s in the geographically central but culturally marginal Midwest. By recovering an insurgent print culture of interracial radicalism in what I consciously call the “Heartland,” this dissertation challenges frequent depictions of the region as racially homogenous and culturally static while extending the history of U.S. literary radicalism over time, place, and race.
Language
English (en)
Chair and Committee
William Maxwell
Committee Members
Abram Van Engen; Gary Holcomb; Martha Patterson; Rafia Zafar
Recommended Citation
Blanc, Marc, "Bleeding Heartland: Race, Region, and Radicalism in Midwest Print Culture, 1877–1939" (2024). Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3282.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds/3282