Nathaniel Mills
Biographic Data
| ID | 3612862 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nathaniel Mills |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nathaniel |
| FAMILY NAME | Mills |
| SIGNATURE | MILLS N |
| AFFILIATIONS | California State University, Northridge |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 5 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 5 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Aggravated into Writing
This essay provides the first in-depth literary and biographical analysis of Margaret Walker's time in 1939–40 as a poetry student at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. There, she clashed with her teacher, Paul Engle, over the proper form and content of African American poetry, a conflict that anticipates many recent testimonials of the marginalizing of writers of color in MFA programs. Walker nonetheless credited Engle with having "aggravated [her] int…
Ragged Revolutionaries
Ralph Ellison's Marxism
This article examines Ralph Ellison's time as a writer on the Communist left in the 1930s and identifies the distinct structures of his thought in this understudied phase of his career. Situating Ellison's social, political, and institutional theories in relation to Communist discourse, the work of Richard Wright, and the later innovations of Louis Althusser and Antonio Gramsci, I present Ellison as an inventive Marxist theorist. Particularly, I …
Playing in the Dark, on the Left, and Out of Bounds
Through a reading of Nelson Algren's World War II short story, “He Couldn't Boogie-Woogie Worth a Damn” (1947), this essay considers the possibility of anti-imperialist, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist representations of African American identity and experience in the work of nonblack authors. The essay approaches the problem of cross-racial representation through Toni Morrison's conceptualization of “playing in the dark” and argues that Algren'…
Cleaver/Baldwin Revisited
Cleaver/Baldwin Revisited:Naturalism and the Gendering of Black Revolution Nathaniel Mills (bio) Literary naturalism has played a fundamental role in shaping discussions of the sociopolitical responsibilities of black writing. In African-American literary history, conventions of naturalist political protest have been most frequently associated with the work of Richard Wright, and dissent from those conventions associated with James Baldwin. In "E…
Aggravated into Writing
This essay provides the first in-depth literary and biographical analysis of Margaret Walker's time in 1939–40 as a poetry student at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. There, she clashed with her teacher, Paul Engle, over the proper form and content of African American poetry, a conflict that anticipates many recent testimonials of the marginalizing of writers of color in MFA programs. Walker nonetheless credited Engle with having "aggravated [her] int…
Cleaver/Baldwin Revisited
Cleaver/Baldwin Revisited:Naturalism and the Gendering of Black Revolution Nathaniel Mills (bio) Literary naturalism has played a fundamental role in shaping discussions of the sociopolitical responsibilities of black writing. In African-American literary history, conventions of naturalist political protest have been most frequently associated with the work of Richard Wright, and dissent from those conventions associated with James Baldwin. In "E…
Playing in the Dark, on the Left, and Out of Bounds
Through a reading of Nelson Algren's World War II short story, “He Couldn't Boogie-Woogie Worth a Damn” (1947), this essay considers the possibility of anti-imperialist, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist representations of African American identity and experience in the work of nonblack authors. The essay approaches the problem of cross-racial representation through Toni Morrison's conceptualization of “playing in the dark” and argues that Algren'…
Ralph Ellison's Marxism
This article examines Ralph Ellison's time as a writer on the Communist left in the 1930s and identifies the distinct structures of his thought in this understudied phase of his career. Situating Ellison's social, political, and institutional theories in relation to Communist discourse, the work of Richard Wright, and the later innovations of Louis Althusser and Antonio Gramsci, I present Ellison as an inventive Marxist theorist. Particularly, I …
Ragged Revolutionaries
Aggravated into Writing
This essay provides the first in-depth literary and biographical analysis of Margaret Walker's time in 1939–40 as a poetry student at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. There, she clashed with her teacher, Paul Engle, over the proper form and content of African American poetry, a conflict that anticipates many recent testimonials of the marginalizing of writers of color in MFA programs. Walker nonetheless credited Engle with having "aggravated [her] int…
Political science (5 works) · History (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · Race, History, and American Society (4 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Art (3 works) · Art history (3 works) · Literature (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works)