Role Harlemu při formování afroamerické městské kultury: hlavní město kultury versus ghetto

Kárová, Julie

Harlem is an emblematic neighborhood in New York City, historically perceived both as the center of African American culture and a black ghetto. This thesis explores the African American urban culture at its birth and analyzes it through the portrayals of Harlem in black literature, music, and visual art of the period. The era of the 1920s through the 1940s illustrates most distinctly the dual identity of Harlem as a cultural capital versus a ghetto as the 1920s marked a period of unprecedented cultural flowering embodied by the Harlem Renaissance, whereas the 1930s and 1940s were characterized by the Great Depression and its aftermath. During these years the living conditions in Harlem significantly deteriorated. The aim of this work is to critically analyze the period of African American cultural boom of the Harlem Renaissance years and discuss its relevance for the period in comparison to the artistic reactions to the experience of life in the ghetto. The proposed argument is that the way Harlem was depicted in African American culture and the artistic reflection of its duality characterized African American urban experience and culture in the period of 1920s through the 1940s, concentrating on the problem of urban reality in contrast with urban fantasy.

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