• Deck Lee and the Location of The Professor in Post Soul Literary Plots

    Author(s):
    Charles Gleek (see profile)
    Date:
    2017
    Group(s):
    TC Digital Humanities, TM Literary and Cultural Theory
    Subject(s):
    American literature--African American authors
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    new black aesthetic, post soul, distant reading, African American literature
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6PZ4H
    Abstract:
    The professor character is no stranger to readers of contemporary African American literature. Indeed, the variety and ubiquity of a professorial character across a range of post soul fictional novels is not simply a curiosity to comment on, but phenomena available for critical interrogation. This analysis explores the location of Deck Lee’s character in Danzy Senna’s novel Caucasia. The term ‘location,’ refers to the physical locations where Deck Lee appears in the plot, what Deck does in those spaces and whom he does things with. The central argument of this analysis is that Senna’s character of Deck Lee is emblematic of the complicated ways that professors appear in post soul literary representation, and thus work against tropes of the narrowly-articulated absent-minded or exclusively-scholarly professor in popular culture. Moreover, this analysis of Deck Lee points to an approach to study professorial characters that are ubiquitous in post soul literature, one that could theoretically inform debates about how the complexities of African American life correspond to contemporary literary characters.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    6 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved

    Downloads

    Item Name: pdf deck-lee-and-the-location-of-the-professor-in-post-soul-literary-plots.pdf
      Download View in browser
    Activity: Downloads: 395

    Back to Deposits