Aesthetics of Freedom: Literary Forms and Post-colonial World-Making in the Global Cityscape

This project studies translocality as a literary method of world-making in the African diasporic metropolitan novel. Drawing upon the interdisciplinary approach of literary geography, it examines a global circuit of five cities and five authors, moving from New York, London, Istanbul, Nairobi, and São Paulo. Its inquiry is focused on the ways literature historicizes urban space through the cultural production of its Black diaspora. Funding for this project will initiate the global research, beginning with essential archival work at the Moorland–Spingarn Research Center (MSRC) at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York.

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