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Jennings-Alexander, J. Y. (2020). Reading Whiteness: Applications of Critical Whiteness Theory to 21St Century Black Authored Fiction. Retrieved from https://purl.lib.fsu.edu/diginole/2020_Summer_Fall_JenningsAlexander_fsu_0071E_15955
The critical analysis of race often has been considered the domain of fields like history, sociology, and ethnic studies, yet African American literature has always been fertile ground for the examination of race and whiteness, defined here as the structures and practices of racism, white supremacy and inequality that often define racialized experiences. Especially in the early part of the 21st century, the treatment of an intersectional inquiry between whiteness and literature, within the context of the African American Literary tradition and the American literature classroom, deserves additional attention in an effort to reveal how authors of fiction written during this era interrogate the changing dynamics of race and oppression in a post-race world. African American fiction then becomes an important venue for the interrogation of dynamic systems that maintain structural racism by providing critical distance for the reader. Select texts present as case study opportunities for the exploration of how African American literature can serve as a conduit for understanding how whiteness is operationalized and how readers can gain critical racial literacy skills through engaged analysis of these and similar texts. Whiteness in action becomes observable through the analysis of works from contemporary black-identifying authors like Edward P. Jones, Paul Beatty, and Toni Morrison, all of whom explore concepts like white anxiety, white invisibility, white privilege and white supremacy in a post-civil rights age. The use of a curated African American literature curriculum is proposed to offer pedagogical strategies to overcome whiteness. Centering critical whiteness theory and its application to African American literature functions as a tool for an activist-oriented, engaged racial critique poised to combat these structures in the present. The classroom serves as the contact zone where conversations about whiteness with both Black and non-Black readers can occur naturally and form conscious critiques of existing systems in a way that spurs readers to actively dismantle structural racism.
Jennings-Alexander, J. Y. (2020). Reading Whiteness: Applications of Critical Whiteness Theory to 21St Century Black Authored Fiction. Retrieved from https://purl.lib.fsu.edu/diginole/2020_Summer_Fall_JenningsAlexander_fsu_0071E_15955