| Specters of the Sexual investigates the relationship between American sociology and African-American literature. It demonstrates that African-American literature produced knowledge that was critical of sociology's prevailing wisdom of African-Americans. That wisdom constructed African-Americans as sexually non-normative and pathological. Engaging sociology's construction of African-Americans, African-American literature suggested alternative ways of understanding the African-American culture, in particular and sexuality, in general. The dissertation illustrates how sociology and African-American literature's understandings of African-American culture were compelled by racial discrimination and segregation and analyzes how those understandings intersected with gender, sexuality, and class. |
