Unsparingly honest writings about America and race One of the most important American authors and public intellectuals of the twentieth century, Ralph Ellison had a keen and unsentimental understanding of the relationship between race, art, and activism in American life. He contended with other writers of his day in his examination of the entrenched racism in society, and his writing continues to inform national conversations in letters and culture. The essays in Approaches to Teaching the Works of Ralph Ellison will help instructors in colleges, high schools, and prisons teach not only the indispensable Invisible Man but also Ellison's short stories, his essays, and the two editions of his second, unfinished novel, Juneteenth and Three Days before the Shooting . . . . In considering Ellison's works in relation to jazz, technology, humor, politics, queerness, and disability, this volume mirrors the breadth of Ellison's own life, which extended from the Jim Crow era through the Black Power movement. This volume contains discussion of Ellison's "What America Would Be Like without Blacks," "Flying Home," "Cadillac Flambe," and "An Extravagance of Laughter" as well as works by James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Toni Morrison, and Richard Wright.
Part One: Materials Primary Sources Biographical Materials Contextual Materials Critical Studies Other Resources Part Two: Approaches Introduction, by Tracy Floreani Invisible Man in the Twenty-First Century Layers of Identity: Learning to Teach Invisible Man, by John F. Callahan Resisting Black-Lack Readings of Invisible Man, by Sherry Johnson Can the Joke "Slip the Yoke"? Invisible Man and the Knot of Black Humor, by Kirin Wachter-Grene "Punking" Invisible Man: Reading Race, Queerness, and Disability, by Alvin J. Henry Invisible Man and the Urban Uprising, by J. J. Butts Claiming the Lens of Love: Reading Invisible Man through 1 Corinthians 13, by Martha Greene Eads Broader Contexts Historicizing Ellison: Politics and Pedagogy, by Barbara Foley The Democratic Ideal of Ellison's Jazz-Shaped America, by Sterling Lecater Bland Jr. Listening for the Invisible, by Jake Johnson Short Works The Voices of History: Narrating the Past in Ellison's Short Fiction, by Keith Byerman Teaching Intergenerational Conflict and Technology in "Flying Home" and "Cadillac Flambe", by Paul Devlin Is Resistance Futile? Exploring "King of the Bingo Game" in a Secondary ELA Classroom, by Aimee Myers Navigating Freedom with "Uncertainty and Daring": Reading Ellison and Writing Memoir in a Prison Classroom, by Agnieszka Tuszynska Epistolary Ellison: Letter Writing as Pedagogy, by Clark Barwick Versions of the Second Novel Reflecting on the Mysteries of Ellison's "Unfinished" Project, by Keyana Parks An Episodic Writing-as-Inquiry Approach to Three Days before the Shooting . . ., by Tracy Floreani Notes on Contributors Survey Participants Works Cited
