The Book Circle: Black Women Readers and Middlebrow Taste in Chicago, 1943–1953

IF 0.1 0 HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY
Mary I. Unger
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引用次数: 1

Abstract

abstract:This article offers a case study of the Book Circle, a black women’s reading group on Chicago’s South Side, from 1943 to 1953. It demonstrates how the group recruited literary reception—specifically middlebrow taste—as a way to lobby for racial equality in the postwar era. In doing so, the Book Circle makes visible a group of twentieth-century black readers historically rendered invisible, as Elizabeth McHenry and others have shown. In this way, this article argues, recovering the Book Circle helps us further document the legacy of black women readers—from nineteenth-century literary clubs to black feminist consciousness-raising groups in the 1960s through the 1980s—who turned to reading as a strategy for social transformation.
书坛:1943-1953年芝加哥黑人女性读者与中产阶级品味
本文以1943年至1953年芝加哥南区黑人女性读书团体“读书圈”为研究对象。它展示了该组织如何利用文学接受——特别是中产阶级的品味——作为战后时代争取种族平等的一种方式。正如伊丽莎白·麦克亨利(Elizabeth McHenry)和其他人所展示的那样,在这样做的过程中,图书圈让一群在历史上被忽视的20世纪黑人读者得以曝光。本文认为,通过这种方式,恢复书圈有助于我们进一步记录黑人女性读者的遗产——从19世纪的文学俱乐部到20世纪60年代到80年代的黑人女权主义意识提升团体——她们将阅读作为一种社会转型的策略。
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来源期刊
Reception-Texts Readers Audiences History
Reception-Texts Readers Audiences History HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY-
CiteScore
0.10
自引率
0.00%
发文量
14
期刊介绍: Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal published once a year. It seeks to promote dialog and discussion among scholars engaged in theoretical and practical analyses in several related fields: reader-response criticism and pedagogy, reception study, history of reading and the book, audience and communication studies, institutional studies and histories, as well as interpretive strategies related to feminism, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and postcolonial studies, focusing mainly but not exclusively on the literature, culture, and media of England and the United States.
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