In the twilight of Jim Crow : African American literature, totalitarianism, and the Cold War.

In the Twilight of Jim Crow examines how African American literary production of the post-Second World War era advances an ambitious critique of totalitarianism and Cold War ideological currents through the lens of racial and colonial violence.

Focusing primarily on the work of W. E. B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, Ann Petry, Gwendolyn Brooks, and James Baldwin, this dissertation provides a novel, interdisciplinary account of a neglected period in African American cultural history.

By excavating this important story, the project aims both to critique historiography of the twentieth century and to revise the Cold War--and contemporary--discourse of totalitarianism.