Center for Biography Brown Bag - Thursday, February 9th, 2012

*This presentation is the first of a three-part series on Ralph Ellison, African American Literature, and American Studies*

Center for Biography Brown Bag Series--

Encountering Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man: The Politics of Textual Revision

By visiting scholar Barbara Foley

Thursday, February 9th, 2012

12:00pm - 1:15pm

Center for Korean Studies Auditorium

Professor Foley will describe the process of researching and writing her 2010 book, Wrestling with the Left: The Making of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Her principal focus will be on the extensive revisions that Ellison made during the seven years (1945-52) during which he wrote his famous novel.

Drawing upon her examination of the thousands of pages of drafts and notes of Ellison’s novel, she will demonstrate how a text that was originally proletarian in orientation and sympathetic to the left was converted into a cold war classic. Overlaid upon this narrative of Ellison’s changing political and artistic goals will be Foley’s narrative of her own encounter with—and estimate of—the novel over several decades, from her days as a graduate student involved in the New Left to the present. 



Barbara Foley, one of the foremost contemporary Marxist critics of American literature, is Professor in the Department of English and the Program in American Studies at Rutgers University, Newark. She is the author of four books, the most recent of which is Wrestling with the Left: The Making of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man as well as of numerous articles on proletarian literature, African American literature and documentary fiction.

For more information, please contact biograph@hawaii.edu or 956-3774

www.facebook.com/CBRHawaii

This presentation is the first of a three-part series on Ralph Ellison, African American Literature, and American Studies that also includes the following talks—

Lecture, Department Of English
Thursday, February 9 2012 3:00-4.30 PM, @ KUY 402

“Repression In Biography, Repression In History: The Politics Of The Political Unconscious”

Discussion, American Studies
Friday, February 10 2012 2:00-3:30 PM, @ Moore 328

“What Happens When You Put The Left At The Center In American Literary History?”

Moderators: Robert Perkinson & Njoroge Njoroge

These events are made possible by a SEED grant and the support of American Studies, Center for Biographical Research, Ethnic Studies, English, and History.