The title of the article is ‘Reframing Blackness: The Photograph and African American Literary Modernism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century’.
The author is Deborah M. March and ProQuest LLC published it in May 2012. It was retrieved from the ProQuest database by searching ‘Blackness’ as the keyword. The dissertation evolves the efforts made by the Black community to define blackness to the world. The author collects information from different materials such as posters, prints, race encyclopedias, and unpublished scrapbooks from the African American writers.
Photography is used to provide samples for comparison of different categories of the American society. The findings from the photograph collections would be used to develop innovations to shape the future of the African American literary works. The author compares the works of four writers in each chapter to investigate the works that have not been included in other literary histories. The dissertation helps to bridge the gaps that deter the African American community from understanding their origins to precision. The organization of the article provides a chronological account of Black literary history from the Harlem Renaissance. The dissertation was interesting from many perspectives.
The author depicts photography as an important literary element in African American history. It was interesting to know that photographs were used in those eras to spread information about race literature. The author highlights that print technology emerged in the late nineteenth century and facilitated the massive reproduction o photographs at a cheap price. The dissertation was appealing to read due to numerous photographs that were attached to the explanations of different literary works. The photographs helped in providing factual evidence on the claims made by the author. It was a good choice because it discussed the role of African Americans in the evolvement of literature.
It gives a credit for special literary works that have not been discussed in conventional literary articles.
