M. Cooper Harriss, Ph.D. Candidate, Religion and Literature
“The Dark Tower: Invisible Man’s Theological Occasion”
Time: 12:00pm, Thursday, April 29th, 2010
Place: Swift Hall, Room 400
Food: Snacks provided, feel free to bring your lunch
Paper: Electronic copies will be available by request. Kyle’s email is kwagner@uchicago.edu
Kenneth Warren suggests that Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) demands an “occasional” reading–one that considers the novel in full light of its historical context–if we are to draw broader implications from its understanding of race and especially the novel’s ability (in this way) to “speak for [us]”. “The Dark Tower” situates Ellison and his novel in a theological context of 1952, reading Invisible Man through the work of Reinhold Niebuhr (whose The Irony of American History appeared one week before Invisible Man), Perry Miller (whose “Errand into the Wilderness” was first delivered one month later), and Paul Tillich (from whom the first volume of Systematic Theology appeared in 1951, and whose popular volume The Courage to Be was published in 1952). This cluster of authors also allows us to assess Ellison’s intellectual relationship with Nathan A. Scott, Jr., his good friend and a scholar of theology and literature at Chicago and, later, at Virginia. Archival research shows that Scott (a student of Niebuhr and disciple of Tillich) sought unambiguously to foster Ellison’s theological sensibility and to promote his work among religionists.