The first book-length literary analysis of the WPA's Federal Writers' Project (FWP)--a massive New Deal program that put thousands to work documenting the country during the Depression. Drawing on critical histories, archival documents, and select works of fiction, the book examines the nature and history of the FWP's documentary method and its literary imprint, particularly on three key black American writers: Ralph Ellison, Dorothy West, and Margaret Walker. By aiming their documentary lenses so precisely on individual voices, folklore, and cultural communities, FWP writers would...

"In Negative Theology and Utopian Thought in Contemporary American Poetry, Jason Lagapa takes the next step in illuminating the Utopian function at work in contemporary American poetry. Steeped in the Marxist tradition of such critics as Ernst Bloch and Fredric Jameson, Lagapa carefully analyzes the work of four crucial poets--Susan Howe, Nathaniel Mackey, Charles Bernstein, and Alice Notley--in order to demonstrate how these poets' innovative strategies mobilize the anticipatory force that Bloch names the 'not yet.' Lagapa makes convincing use of the tradition of negative theology,...