Professor Mathes is a specialist in African American Literature, Twentieth Century Literature, and African Diaspora Studies. He is currently writing a book entitled, Imagine the Sound: Experimental Form in Post-Civil Rights African American Literature. This study examines the relationship between sound, social transformation, and literary innovation during the shifting racial climate of the 1960s-1980s. In a related project, he is co-editing a volume of essays on Black Arts Movement writer and critic Larry Neal. Professor Mathes is presently a member of the Rutgers Committee on New Directions in Caribbean Studies and is planning a second project that focuses on the circulation of black radical thought between Jamaica and the United States during the late 20th century.
Research
African American Literature; Twentieth Century Literature;
African Diaspora Studies
