Description: An examination of how nineteenth-century African American folklore studies became a site of national debate
Brief description: Shirley Moody-Turner, State College, Pennsylvania, is associate professor of English and African American studies at Pennsylvania State University. She is coeditor of Contemporary African American Literature: The Living Canon and has published articles and essays on black folklore and African American literature in African American Review, MELUS, Journal of Southern History, MLA Approaches to Teaching Charles W. Chesnutt, Oxford Bibliographies Online, and A Companion to African American Literature.
Review Quotes: Centering the work of black and white folklorists and scholars of folklore in the national debates about the politics of racial representation at the close of the nineteenth century, Moody-Turner brilliantly constructs an alternative tradition of African American folklore studies and challenges conventional notions of what counts as theorizations of folklore and race. This book is a splendidly original and extremely well-written contribution to black folklore and literary studies. Moody-Turner combines mastery of the archive with an equally strong grasp of literary theory and critical race studies. This book was a delight to read, and I learned something new in every chapter. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the politics of representation, American intellectual history, and the history of folklore studies.--Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University