UT Press publishes “The Ideological Origins of African American Literature” by Phillip M. Richards

The University of Tennessee Press has published The Ideological Origins of African American Literature: From Puritanism to Romanticism by literary scholar Phillip M. Richards. Released on June 27, it is now available in hardcover and ebook formats.

In this landmark text, Richards offers a reconstruction of the ideological foundations that shaped the emergence of African American literature in the United States. Spanning a period of 125 years, Richards traces how African American writers responded to, absorbed, and often rejected the dominant social, political, and literary forces of their time. Their writing, Richard argues, has long been shaped by a dynamic and often oppositional engagement with dominant white American ideologies. Rather than merely reflecting these cultural movements, Black writers and thinkers uniquely reacted to, adapted, and reimagined them to form a distinct and evolving literary voice. From eighteenth-century Puritan ideas to nineteenth-century Romanticism and early Modernism, Black authors were carving out a path all their own in American literary tradition.

Prominent African American writers such as Phillis Wheatley, Richard Allen, and later figures like W. E. B. Du Bois and Langston Hughes, grappled with the inherited American culture, shifting intellectual trends, and the social realities of racism, Jim Crow, and urban migration. Richards further traces the emergence of Romanticism, which appeared with white American authors such as Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman but would not take shape in African American literature until years later. Through this analysis, Richards reveals how Black literature both emerged from and pushed against the ideological currents of its time, ultimately helping to define the American literary landscape.

Richards’s study challenges the field to reconsider African American literature not simply as reactive or marginal but as ideologically rich and historically grounded in its own right. This work is essential reading for scholars of literature, American studies, African American history, and intellectual history.

The Ideological Origins of African American Literature is available for purchase at utpress.org or wherever books are sold.

To connect with the author, review copies, or for course adoption information, please contact Stephanie Phillips, publicity and promotion coordinator for UT Press (sphill36@utk.edu or 865-974-6106).

The University of Tennessee Press is the Volunteer State’s book publisher, committed to preserving and promoting the rich cultural and intellectual heritage of Tennessee and the region. Through its focused publishing program, UT Press strives to deepen appreciation for the communities, ecosystems, and histories that make the state unique. Its mission is to enlighten readers, foster cultural dialogue, and improve the quality of life for the people of Tennessee and around the world. UT Press is a division of the University of Tennessee Libraries. For more information, visit www.utpress.org.