Literature in Motion: Black Authors and the Movies

The book is “almost everywhere,” lamented Henry James in 1899. Advancements in transport as well as
communications and printing technologies effected an explosion of print which indeed seemed to
transform US literary culture during the early decades of the 20th century. Strikingly absent from the
scholarship is the significant contribution of motion pictures to these cultural shifts. In her paper, Prof.
Gleeson-White sketches the argument of her new book "Silent Film and the Formations of US Literary
Culture: Literature in Motion" and shows how motion pictures provided Black authors a means to navigate the gnarly terrain of authorship during the Jim Crow era.