In a literary world dominated by such luminaries as Nobel prize winner Toni Morrison and Pulitzer prize winner Edward P. Jones, novelist and short story writer Ann Petry remains an undervalued--if not wholly undiscovered--treasure of African American literature. Primarily known as the sole woman member of the “Richard Wright School of Social Protest,” Petry has garnered attention almost exclusively on the basis of her 1946 novel The Street, a work that superficially conforms to the dictates of “Black Protest” fiction. This lecture will address how gender and the politics of literary expression account for her relative invisibility in African American/American literary studies. In addition to exploring her life and prodigious literary output, Clark will discuss his current research project, “The Radical Fiction of Ann Petry: From Gangsta to Gothic.”
Professor Clark is Associate Professor of English and African/African American Studies at George Mason University. He includes among his teaching interests masculinity/gender studies, the black bildungsroman and the African American short story. In addition to his forthcoming book on Petry, Clark is the author of Black Manhood in James Baldwin, Ernest J. Gaines, and August Wilson, and editor of the essay collection, Contemporary Black Men’s Fiction and Drama. He has also authored critical essays on writers including Petry, Gaines, William Faulkner and Lorraine Hansberry, essays which have appeared in publications such as the Faulkner Journal, African American Review, Callaloo, Black Women Playwrights: Visions on the American Stage and Ann Petry’s Short Fiction: Critical Essays. Clark earned his bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary and his doctorate in English from the University of North Carolina.
The Vision Series Lectures showcase some of the research and creativity that takes place at Mason and offer a chance to share the frontiers of scholarship in an accessible style from practitioners across a broad spectrum of work.
February 05, 2012
