Invisible Man Syllabus

In honor of the 70th anniversary of the publication of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952, Random House), we are pleased to offer our Invisible Man Syllabus. The books, journal articles, and special issues in this syllabus explore the significance of the novel in relation to art, music, modernism, Blackness, psychiatry, and more.

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BOOK

Wrestling with the Left: The Making of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

Barbara Foley

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Toward a Theory of Rhetoric: Ralph Ellison, Kenneth Burke, and the Problem of Modernism

Robert Genter
Twentieth-Century Literature 48:2, 2002

JOURNAL ARTICLE

The Schizophrenic Solution: Dialectics of Neurosis and Anti-Psychiatric Animus in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

J. Bradford Campbell
Novel 43:3, 2010

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Signifying on Stowe: Ralph Ellison and the Sentimental Rhetoric of Invisible Man

Christopher G. Diller
Modern Language Quarterly 75:4, 2014

JOURNAL ARTICLE

The Comic Book World of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

Jean-Christophe Cloutier
Novel 43:2, 2010

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Writing Underground: Ralph Ellison and the Novel

Cheryl Alison
Twentieth-Century Literature 63:3, 2017

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Race Man, Organization Man, Invisible Man

Andrew Hoberek
Modern Language Quarterly 59:1, 1998

JOURNAL ARTICLE

“Simply by Reacting?”: The Sociology of Race and Invisible Man's Automata

Scott Selisker
American Literature 83:3, 2011

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Ralph Ellison's Contemporaneity

Torleif Persson
Novel 53:1, 2020

JOURNAL ARTICLE

There's Something about Mary: Female Wisdom and the Folk Presence in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

Shanna Greene Benjamin
Meridians 12:1, 2014

JOURNAL ARTICLE

The Visual Art of Invisible Man: Ellison's Portrait of Blackness

Lena M. Hill
American Literature 81:4, 2009

JOURNAL ARTICLE

The Art of Stereotyping: How Ralph Ellison Made Ernest Hemingway Black

Leslie Shimotakahara
Genre 39:2, 2006

JOURNAL ARTICLE

“A Slightly Different Sense of Time”: Palimpsestic Time in Invisible Man

Marc Singer
Twentieth-Century Literature 49:3, 2003

JOURNAL ARTICLE

“So Black, So Blue”: Ralph Ellison, Louis Armstrong and the Bebop Aesthetic

Michael Borshuk
Genre 37:2, 2004

BOOK

Legal Fictions: Constituting Race, Composing Literature

Karla FC Holloway

JOURNAL ISSUE

Ralph Ellison: The Next Fifty Years

Ronald A. T. Judy
boundary 2 30:2, 2003

BOOK

Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity

Alexander G. Weheliye