{"id":6449,"date":"2018-08-29T15:39:06","date_gmt":"2018-08-29T19:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/?post_type=profile&p=6449"},"modified":"2026-02-26T15:46:52","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T20:46:52","slug":"anita-patterson","status":"publish","type":"profile","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/profile\/anita-patterson\/","title":{"rendered":"Anita Patterson"},"content":{"rendered":"

For CV\u00a0click here<\/a><\/p>\n

My research focuses on American literature, modernism, and black poetry of the Americas, and my approach, which emphasizes transnational and intercultural dialogue, is reflected in courses I have taught at all levels, including \u201cTransnational Modernism,\u201d \u201cAmerican Literature and Transculturation,\u201d \u201cAmerican Poetry,\u201d \u201cIntroduction to American Studies,\u201d and \u201cAmerican Literature and World Cultures.\u201d\u00a0 My first book, From Emerson to King:\u00a0 Democracy, Race, and the Politics of Protest<\/i> (Oxford UP, 1997) examined Emerson\u2019s critical engagement with the dynamics of economic individualism and the debate over slavery, and showed how his writings fostered an abiding legacy of protest writing by African Americans such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King, Jr.\u00a0 In Race, American Literature and Transnational Modernisms<\/i> (Cambridge UP, 2008), I developed a more global and comparative perspective.\u00a0 Placing American literature in a New World context, I explored how the poetry of Whitman, Poe, Eliot, and Pound, along with their Francophone avant-garde contemporaries in the Caribbean and in Europe, influenced African American modernists such as Langston Hughes, as well as Caribbean poets such as Derek Walcott, Wilson Harris, and Aim\u00e9 C\u00e9saire.\u00a0 My current book project, American Japonisme and Modernist Style,<\/em> continues with my interest in transnationalism, intercultural exchange, and the American contexts of literary modernism. Here, however, I study how the opening of Japan, and the widening\u00a0popular appeal of Japanese culture in the latter half of the nineteenth\u00a0century, fostered an American literary tradition of transpacific exchange that\u00a0extends from Emerson, Okakura, and T. S. Eliot up through the Chicago Renaissance\u00a0and the\u00a0haiku-inspired poetry of Richard Wright.<\/span><\/p>\n

Selected Publications<\/h5>\n
    \n
  • \u201c\u2018Careful\u00a0Candors\u2019: \u00a0Gwendolyn Brooks, T. S. Eliot,\u00a0and the Poetics of Social Critique,\u201d\u00a0<\/span>Literature\u00a0and Culture of the Chicago Renaissance<\/i>, ed. Y.\u00a0Hakutani (New York:\u00a0\u00a0Routledge, 2019), 88-103.<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u201cEliot, Emerson, and Transpacific Modernism,\u201d\u00a0<\/span>Modernities and Modernization in North\u00a0America<\/i>, ed. I. Brasch and R. Mayer (Heidelberg:\u00a0Universit\u00e4tsverlag Winter, 2018), 23-44.<\/span>
    \n<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u201cDeux po\u00e8tes du Nouveau\u00a0Monde:\u00a0\u00a0Edgar Allan Poe et Saint-John\u00a0Perse,\u201d trans. C. Vottero,\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Souffle de Perse<\/i>\u00a018 (Juin 2018):\u00a0\u00a041-52.<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u201cT. S. Eliot and Transpacific Modernism,\u201d American Literary History<\/em> (2015)<\/li>\n
  • \u201cGlobal America Revisited:\u00a0 Ezra Pound, Yone Noguchi, and Modernist Japonisme,\u201d Nanzan Review of American Studies<\/em> (2011)<\/li>\n
  • \u201c1922:\u00a0 T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence,\u201d A New Literary History of America<\/em>, ed. G. Marcus and W. Sollors (2009)<\/li>\n
  • Race, American Literature and Transnational Modernisms<\/em> (Cambridge University Press, 2008)<\/li>\n
  • From Emerson to King: Democracy, Race and the Politics of Protest<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 1997)<\/li>\n
  • \u201cTranslation and Modernist Transculturation: T. S. Eliot and Langston Hughes,\u201d special translation issue of\u00a0The Harvard Advocate<\/em> (2008)<\/li>\n
  • \u201cJaponisme and Modernist Style in Afro-Caribbean Literature: The Art of Derek Walcott,\u201d\u00a0Review of International American Studies<\/em> 2.2 (2007)<\/li>\n
  • \u201cEmerson, il transnazionalismo e l\u2019enigma dell\u2019amicizia,\u201d America at large: Americanistica transnazionale e nuova comparatistica<\/em> (2004)<\/li>\n
  • \u201cEmerson, Transnationalism, and the Enigma of Friendship,\u201d\u00a0Emerson at 200: Proceedings of the International Bicentennial Conference<\/em> (2004)<\/li>\n
  • \u201cPastoral Poetry and Transculturation in Guyana: The Contexts of Wilson Harris\u2019s \u2018Trail\u2019,\u201d\u00a0The Journal of Commonwealth Literature<\/em> (2002)<\/li>\n
  • \u201cContingencies of Pleasure and Shame: Jamaican Women\u2019s Poetry,\u201d Feminist Consequences: Theory for the New Century<\/em> (2001)<\/li>\n
  • \u201cJazz, Realism and the Modernist Lyric: The Poetry of Langston Hughes,\u201d Modern Language Quarterly<\/em> (2000)<\/li>\n
  • \u201cDoing More than Patrick Henry: Douglass\u2019s\u00a0Narrative and Nineteenth-Century American Protest Writing,\u201d Approaches to Teaching Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass<\/em> (1999)<\/li>\n
  • \u201cImages of the Internment: Mitsuye Yamada\u2019s\u00a0Camp Notes,\u201d MELUS<\/em> (1999)<\/li>\n
  • \u201cHarriet Jacobs, Henry Thoreau, and the Character of Disobedience,\u201d\u00a0Harriet Jacobs and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: New Critical Essays<\/em> (1996)<\/li>\n
  • \u201cAmerican Philosophy as Praxis: From Emerson and Thoreau to Martin Luther King,\u201d\u00a0Salmagundi<\/em> (1995)<\/li>\n
  • \u201cNegotiating Claims of Race and Rights: Du Bois, Emerson, and the Critique of Liberal Nationalism,\u201d\u00a0The Massachusetts Review<\/em> (1994)<\/li>\n
  • \u201cComparative Identities: Exile in the Writings of Frantz Fanon and W. E. B. Du Bois,\u201d\u00a0Borders, Boundaries, and Frames<\/em> (1994)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
    Work in Progress<\/h5>\n
      \n
    • American Japonisme and Modernist Style<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"author":12176,"template":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/6449"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/profile"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12176"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/6449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10121,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/6449\/revisions\/10121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}