You are here

Home » Islandora Repository » Research Repository » The Graduate School » Theses and Dissertations

Darker Matters

Permalink: http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/2018_Sp_Brickler_fsu_0071E_14496
Choose the citation style.
Brickler, A. D. J. (2018). Darker Matters: Racial Theorizing through Alternate History, Transhistorical Black Bodies, and Towards a Literature of Black Mecha in the Science Fiction Novels of Steven Barnes. Retrieved from http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/2018_Sp_Brickler_fsu_0071E_14496
PREVIEW Datastream
Full Title

Darker Matters: Racial Theorizing through Alternate History, Transhistorical Black Bodies, and Towards a Literature of Black Mecha in the Science Fiction Novels of Steven Barnes

Names

Brickler, Alexander Dumas J. (author)
McGregory, Jerrilyn (professor directing dissertation)
Poey, Delia (university representative)
Montgomery, Maxine Lavon, 1959- (committee member)
Ward, Candace (committee member)
Moore, Dennis D. (committee member)
Florida State University (degree granting institution)
College of Arts and Sciences (degree granting college)
Department of English (degree granting department)

Date Issued

2018

Format

text
doctoral thesis

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to provide a critical investigation of several novels written by African American science- and speculative fiction author, Steven Barnes. In exploring Lion's Blood (2002), Blood Brothers (1996), the Aubry Knight trilogy (1983, 1989, 1993), and Iron Shadows (1998), the project posits that there is substantive work being done in depicting the Black embodied somatic as a site of allegorical historicizing. Herein, I read the novels' work with subgenres of alternate history, dark fantasy, cyberpunk, and fantastical AfroAsia (respectively) as serving as a means by which Barnes's constructions of gendered Blackness can meaningfully be read as a kind of Afrofuturist engagement with both the Afrodiasporic past and globalized dimensions of the yet-to-come.

Topics

Literature
African Americans
Study and teaching

Keywords

Afrofuturism, Alternate History, Blackness, Mecha, Somatic, Steven Barnes

Date of Defense

April 16, 2018.

Submitted Note

A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Bibliography Note

Includes bibliographical references.

Advisory Committee

Jerrilyn McGregory, Professor Directing Dissertation; Delia Poey, University Representative; Maxine Montgomery, Committee Member; Candace Ward, Committee Member; Dennis Moore, Committee Member.

Publisher

Florida State University

Identifier

2018_Sp_Brickler_fsu_0071E_14496

Choose the citation style.
Brickler, A. D. J. (2018). Darker Matters: Racial Theorizing through Alternate History, Transhistorical Black Bodies, and Towards a Literature of Black Mecha in the Science Fiction Novels of Steven Barnes. Retrieved from http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/2018_Sp_Brickler_fsu_0071E_14496

In Collections