| If not conceiving of art as strictly a “weapon,” almost all of the participants in the movement of social realism seem to have shared a profound faith in the capacity of cultural work to leverage transformations in the social and political sphere. For most African American cultural workers engagement with social realism involved a negotiation between the twin pulls of Black nationalism and class-centered ideologies, in which writers and artists directed their cultural expression to serve alternately as an instrument of social criticism, a means of instilling race pride, and an agent of interracial working class coalition building. Through a five chapter study, my dissertation examines the complex interplay of these self-consciously politicized agendas in African American literature and visual art produced between 1930 and 1952.; The opening chapter of the dissertation frames the emergence of social realism in African American literature and visual art in terms of the socioeconomic crises, radical politics, and institutional networks which set the tone for key shifts in American cultural production during the Depression era. Drawing on existing scholarly studies, archival material, and especially firsthand statements by writers and artists themselves, the ensuing four chapters detail the range of purposes toward which creative artists sought to apply social realist cultural expression in four media: murals, graphic arts, novels, and poetry. In particular, I highlight the underdiscussed work of Charles White, John Wilson, Willard Motley, and Frank Marshall Davis within the larger context of African American work in these respective media, giving special attention to questions of why social realists selected specific media, who they imagined as their audience, and what impact they hoped that their cultural work would have. By focusing on the lives and work of selected writers and visual artists in this manner, I seek to call attention not only to a group of seldom studied social realists, but also to the presence of an often neglected movement in African American arts and letters. |
