Department of English

Frequently cited as a candidate for the “Great American Novel,” Ralph Ellison’s 1952 Invisible Man is a text that resists easy categorization. It is simultaneously a searing portrait of the psychic violence of racism in the U.S. and an affirmation of the project of American democracy. It is a sweeping picaresque and a novel of ideas— about identity, self-fashioning, history, freedom, radical politics, and the stories that bind us into national collectives. In this course, we will confront these ideas and contradictions head-on through a careful and sustained close reading of Invisible Man. Along the way, we will examine the cultural and historical contexts that shaped the novel, including the Harlem Renaissance, modernism, mid-century Marxist movements, and the onset of Cold War American nationalism. We will then delve into some of the works that influenced Invisible Man (including writings by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Mark Twain, James Joyce, and Richard Wright) and the works Invisible Man helped inspire in turn (including former President Barack Obama’s coming-of-age memoir Dreams from My Father). Throughout this process, we’ll think about themes that vexed and obsessed Ellison and their enduring resonance today, including invisibility/hypervisibility, the symbolism of the underground, and the emotional and political power of progress narratives. This course is open to students from all majors and all students will leave with a deeper understanding of twentieth-century African American literature and the history and theory of the novel. Assignments will include brief research exercises and short writing in various forms. For the final project, students will have the choice of a critical essay or creative project.