Nadia Nurhussein, "Black Land: Imperial Ethiopianism and African America" (Princeton UP, 2019)

New Books in Literary Studies

In Black Land: Imperial Ethiopianism and African America (Princeton University Press, 2019), Nadia Nurhussein explores late nineteenth and twentieth century African American cultural engagement with and literary depictions of imperial Ethiopia. Widely celebrated as one of two African nations to resist European colonization in the age of modern imperialism, Ethiopia captured the attention of a host of African American journalists, artists, writers, adventurers, and even financiers. Drawing on an array of images, plays, and texts from well-known figures such as Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and George Schuler to lesser known figures such as Harry Foster Dean and William Henry Ellis, Nurhussein shows how some African Americans came to embrace and others later critiqued an imperial Ethiopia.

This work provides an innovative approach to the study of Ethiopianism as more than a concept but a concrete place.

Sharika Crawford is an associate professor of history at the United States Naval Academy.

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