AMER Professor Publishes Study of the Contemporary African American Novel
Department of American Culture and Literature faculty member Assoc. Prof. Emine Lale Demirtürk has a new book. "The Contemporary African American Novel: Multiple Cities, Multiple Subjectivities, and Discursive Practices of Whiteness in Everyday Urban Encounters" was published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (co-published with Rowman & Littlefield) in July 2012.
As the book jacket notes, Dr. Demirtürk's study "examines post-1990s African American novels, namely the 'neo-urban novel,' developing a new urban discourse for the 21st century on how the city as a social formation impacts black characters through everyday discursive practices of whiteness. The critique of everyday life in a racial context is important in considering diverse forms of the lived reality of black everyday life in the novelistic representations of the white dominant urban order. African American fictional representations of the city have political significance in that the 'neo-urban novel' explores the nature, and indeed the very possibility of a dialogic communication with American society at large. The book explores the need to understand how whiteness works, what it forecloses, and what it occasionally opens up in everyday life in American society."
Scholars have called Dr. Demirtürk's new book "a significant contribution to African American literature, whiteness studies, and the dynamics of racialized urban space"; a "splendid analysis of 'the African American neo-urban novel'"; and "a rewarding read for serious students of African American literature."