Travel and African American Imagination

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Meet VCU's Authors: Dr. Michael Ra-shon Hall, in conversation with Dr. Kimberly Nichele Brown.

Dr. Hall's newly published book, Freedom Beyond Confinement: Travel and Imagination in African American Cultural History and Letters, examines the paradox of freedom and confinement in African American travel and imagination from post Reconstruction (ca. 1877) to the present. Analyzing a range of sources from the black press and periodicals to literary fiction and nonfiction, Hall charts the development of critical representation of travel from the foundational press and periodicals which offered African Americans crucial information on travel precautions and possibilities (notably during the era of Jim Crow) to the woefully understudied literary fiction that would later provide some of the most compelling and lasting portrayals of the freedoms and constraints African Americans associated with travel.

This virtual event features an open conversation between Hall and Brown, both of whose interdisciplinary scholarship centers African American literature and culture. Delving into Hall's scholarship, this conversation will focus on travel's lasting imprint on the black press and periodicals, literary fiction (and creative expression broadly), and cultural history.

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