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Papers by Christa Buschendorf

Nineteenth Century Prose, Sep 22, 2009

Intellectual Authority and Literary Culture in the US, 1790-1900. Ed. Günter Leypoldt, 2013

Amerikastudien / American Studies 62.4, 2017

The paper argues that Du Bois seriously grappled with Marxism and socialism throughout his life. ... more The paper argues that Du Bois seriously grappled with Marxism and socialism throughout his life. The article's focus is on the much-neglected trilogy of historical novels, The Black Flame, written in the 1950s. Designed as a sequel to his renowned Marxist revisionist study Black Reconstruction (1935), Du Bois's ambitious narrative project covers the eight decades of U.S. American history between 1876 and the mid-1950s. Using the "method of historical fiction," Du Bois creates highly complex texts that combine various literary subgenres and styles with essayistic and scientific prose to offer a non-orthodox Marxian economic perspective on U.S. and international history.

In her early documentary poetry of the 1930s, the Jewish American poet, writer, and political act... more In her early documentary poetry of the 1930s, the Jewish American poet, writer, and political activist Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980) dealt with two famous cases of social injustice, the Gauley Bridge mining disaster where hundreds of workers died owing to unsafe working conditions
(The Book of the Dead), and the lawsuit of the Scottsboro Nine, in which nine young black men were falsely accused of having raped two white women (“The Trial”). On the basis of a radical relational poetics that poses a poetic process built on a close interrelation between poet,
poem, and reader, a process, moreover, in which the reader is redefined as “witness,” Rukeyser generates poetic spaces of justice. In a brief discussion of The Book of the Dead followed by a close reading of “The Trial,” this article shows how Rukeyser—drawing on the analogy between
judicial procedures of witnessing and judging in the legal courtroom and multiple acts of witnessing and judging in the court of poetry—conducts retrials that reveal the severe injustice of the official verdicts in these cases, highlight the dreadful suffering of the victims and, in the end,
call for a state of higher justice.

Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 2013

This article focuses on the function of Piranesi's imaginary prisons in Herman Melville's longpoe... more This article focuses on the function of Piranesi's imaginary prisons in Herman Melville's longpoem, based on the narrator's ekphrasis and meditation on Piranesi in Canto 35. Melville empasizes the paradoxical nature of Piranesi's architectural structures and reads them as metaphors of the human existence in the age of the crisis of belief.

Books by Christa Buschendorf

According to relational sociology, power imbalances are at the root of human conflicts and conseq... more According to relational sociology, power imbalances are at the root of human conflicts and consequently shape the physical and symbolic struggles between interdependent groups or individuals. This essay collection highlights the role of power relations in the African American experience by applying key concepts of Pierre Bourdieu and Norbert Elias to Black literature and culture. The authors offer new readings of power asymmetries as represented in works of canonical and contemporary Black writers (Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Gwendolyn Brooks, Toni Morrison, Percival Everett, Colson Whitehead), rap music (e.g. Jay Z), images of Black homelessness, and figurations of political activism (civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, #BlackLivesMatter in Ferguson).

"As outstanding intellectuals, all the Black prophetic figures in this book [Frederick Douglass, ... more "As outstanding intellectuals, all the Black prophetic figures in this book [Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr, Ella Baker, Malcolm X, and Ida B. Wells] offer astute analyses of the mechanisms of power that help us discern these very mechanisms in the different shapes they take today. As organic intellectuals and acitvists, they reflect on problems of organizing and mobilizing that may provide useful insights for today's freedom fights. And as prophets who compassionately and fearlessly face both the evils of our world and the powers that be, they inspire us to do the same. This is why we need to talk about Black prophetic fire!
From the Introduction, ChB

Nineteenth Century Prose, Sep 22, 2009

Intellectual Authority and Literary Culture in the US, 1790-1900. Ed. Günter Leypoldt, 2013

Amerikastudien / American Studies 62.4, 2017

The paper argues that Du Bois seriously grappled with Marxism and socialism throughout his life. ... more The paper argues that Du Bois seriously grappled with Marxism and socialism throughout his life. The article's focus is on the much-neglected trilogy of historical novels, The Black Flame, written in the 1950s. Designed as a sequel to his renowned Marxist revisionist study Black Reconstruction (1935), Du Bois's ambitious narrative project covers the eight decades of U.S. American history between 1876 and the mid-1950s. Using the "method of historical fiction," Du Bois creates highly complex texts that combine various literary subgenres and styles with essayistic and scientific prose to offer a non-orthodox Marxian economic perspective on U.S. and international history.

In her early documentary poetry of the 1930s, the Jewish American poet, writer, and political act... more In her early documentary poetry of the 1930s, the Jewish American poet, writer, and political activist Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980) dealt with two famous cases of social injustice, the Gauley Bridge mining disaster where hundreds of workers died owing to unsafe working conditions
(The Book of the Dead), and the lawsuit of the Scottsboro Nine, in which nine young black men were falsely accused of having raped two white women (“The Trial”). On the basis of a radical relational poetics that poses a poetic process built on a close interrelation between poet,
poem, and reader, a process, moreover, in which the reader is redefined as “witness,” Rukeyser generates poetic spaces of justice. In a brief discussion of The Book of the Dead followed by a close reading of “The Trial,” this article shows how Rukeyser—drawing on the analogy between
judicial procedures of witnessing and judging in the legal courtroom and multiple acts of witnessing and judging in the court of poetry—conducts retrials that reveal the severe injustice of the official verdicts in these cases, highlight the dreadful suffering of the victims and, in the end,
call for a state of higher justice.

Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 2013

This article focuses on the function of Piranesi's imaginary prisons in Herman Melville's longpoe... more This article focuses on the function of Piranesi's imaginary prisons in Herman Melville's longpoem, based on the narrator's ekphrasis and meditation on Piranesi in Canto 35. Melville empasizes the paradoxical nature of Piranesi's architectural structures and reads them as metaphors of the human existence in the age of the crisis of belief.

According to relational sociology, power imbalances are at the root of human conflicts and conseq... more According to relational sociology, power imbalances are at the root of human conflicts and consequently shape the physical and symbolic struggles between interdependent groups or individuals. This essay collection highlights the role of power relations in the African American experience by applying key concepts of Pierre Bourdieu and Norbert Elias to Black literature and culture. The authors offer new readings of power asymmetries as represented in works of canonical and contemporary Black writers (Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Gwendolyn Brooks, Toni Morrison, Percival Everett, Colson Whitehead), rap music (e.g. Jay Z), images of Black homelessness, and figurations of political activism (civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, #BlackLivesMatter in Ferguson).

"As outstanding intellectuals, all the Black prophetic figures in this book [Frederick Douglass, ... more "As outstanding intellectuals, all the Black prophetic figures in this book [Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr, Ella Baker, Malcolm X, and Ida B. Wells] offer astute analyses of the mechanisms of power that help us discern these very mechanisms in the different shapes they take today. As organic intellectuals and acitvists, they reflect on problems of organizing and mobilizing that may provide useful insights for today's freedom fights. And as prophets who compassionately and fearlessly face both the evils of our world and the powers that be, they inspire us to do the same. This is why we need to talk about Black prophetic fire!
From the Introduction, ChB