PHI 430 Reading Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man in the age of #BLM
Ralph Ellison was an essayist and author of many short stories, but he is most renowned for his only completed novel, Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award. Published in 1952, the novel was acclaimed immediately as one of the most important works of its time, and it garnered Ellison a great deal of attention as a Black intellectual. This course focuses on a close, critical reading of Ellison’s novel, with particular interest in what resources it offers for thinking about systemic racism and the Black Lives Matter movement. Beside the novel, we will read critical essays on the novel and on Ellison as well as contemporary material on current affairs.