Vaughn Rasberry, Assistant Professor Primary Office: 460-326 At Stanford Since: 2010 Email: gvr2@stanford.edu Current Year's Courses: American Culture and the Cold War Introduction to African American Literature Postcolonial Theory in Motion: from the Bandung Era to the Present Degrees: Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2009 M.A., University of Chicago, 2001 B.A., Howard University, 2000 |
Vaughn Rasberry studies African American literature, global Cold War culture, the European Enlightenment and its critics, postcolonial theory, and philosophical theories of modernity. As a Fulbright scholar in 2008-09, he taught in the American Studies department at the Humboldt University Berlin and lectured on African American literature throughout Germany. His current book project, Race and the Totalitarian Century, questions the notion that desegregation prompted African American writers and activists to acquiesce in the normative claims of postwar liberalism. Challenging accounts that portray black cultural workers in various postures of reaction to larger forces--namely U.S. liberalism or Soviet communism--his project argues instead that many writers were involved in a complex national and global dialogue with totalitarianism, the defining geopolitical discourse of the twentieth century. His article, "'Now Describing You': James Baldwin and Cold War Liberalism," appears in an edited volume titled James Baldwin: America and Beyond (University of Michigan Press, 2011). A recent review essay, "Black Cultural Politics at the End of History," appears in the winter 2012 issue of American Literary History. For Black History Month, he published an op ed essay, "The Shape of African American Geopolitics," in Al Jazeera English. Vaughn also teaches in collaboration with the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) and the programs in Modern Thought and Literature, African and African American Studies, and American Studies.
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