Misreading Obama  

A Home Elsewhere: Reading African American Classics in the Age of Obama by Robert B. Stepto Harvard University Press, 2010, 179 pp., $22.95 THE NOMINATION, election, and inauguration of Barack Obama signified a multiplicity of things to a multitude of …



Layers of Paradox  

Not long ago I was part of a “focus group.” The idea of these things is that a publisher assembles some academics and asks them to assess the need for new materials in a given subject . . . to …