Hope Draped in Black: Race, Melancholy, and the Agony of Progress

In Hope Draped in Black Joseph R. Winters responds to the belief that America follows a constant trajectory of racial progress, using African American literature and film to construct an idea of hope that embraces melancholy in order to acknowledge and mourn America's traumatic history

Unreconciled strivings: Du Bois, the seduction of optimism, and the legacy of sorrow -- Unhopeful but not hopeless: melancholic interpretations of freedom and progress -- Hearing the breaks and cuts of history: Ellison, Morrison, and the uses of literary jazz -- Reel progress: race, film, and cinematic melancholy -- Figures of the postracial: race, nation, and violence in the age of Obama and Morrison