FT-52871-04 | Research Programs: Summer Stipends | Tess Eufamia Chakkalakal | Literary Fellows: James Weldon Johnson and Brander Matthews | 6/1/2004 - 9/30/2004 | $5,000.00 | Tess | Eufamia | Chakkalakal | | | | Presidents and Trustees of Williams College | Williamstown | MA | 01267-2600 | USA | 2004 | Literature, General | Summer Stipends | Research Programs | 5000 | 0 | 5000 | 0 |
Brander Matthews, a leading critic of American literature in the 1890s, played a pivotal role in the making of the first modern African American novel: The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson. Yet Matthews’s connection to Johnson and the African American literary tradition has received little critical attention. A comparison of their literary projects reveals striking similarities. This project examines Johnson’s connection to Matthews’s ideas on literature and their importance to shaping the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. |