Black Naturalism: Genre and the Nonhuman in 19th and 20th Century Black Diasporic Literature

My research will provide a dual intervention into the literary genre of naturalism through an exploration of
transnational Black writers. First, my thesis rethinks the temporal and geographical boundaries of when and where
naturalism, as a genre, developed. Second, I argue for the centrality of Black authors in literary naturalism over the
19th…