Vaughn Rasberry, Stanford University

Default profile photo

Assistant Professor Stanford, California gvr2@stanford.edu Office: (650) 723-4226

Bio/Research

Vaughn Rasberry studies African American literature, global Cold War culture, 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...

Click to Expand >>

Bio/Research

Vaughn Rasberry studies African American literature, global Cold War culture, 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: Geopolitics in the Black Literary Imagination, is forthcoming from Harvard University Press. His book 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, a defining geopolitical discourse of the twentieth century.

Click to Shrink <<

Links