Student Profiles: Sean Kelly
My
current research involves issues surrounding masculinity in the works of Richard
Wright and the effects these have on the personal and emotional relationships
among African American men and women. I hope to find out whether the
popular critique of misogyny in Wright’s novels stands firm when enduring
racism and self-hatred prevent the characters, and possibly the author, from
seeing the positive depictions of black women around them/him. If not,
can there be forgiveness and healing in these types of
relationships? I am also interested in the evolution African American
music (spirituals to blues/gospel to jazz and later on to hip hop and rap),
and how it functions as a palimpsest, or rewritable ‘space’ that
allows those who participate to search for and form a positive identity.