The son of a preacher man : race, sexuality and religion in the work of James Baldwin

This thesis explores the three most persistent and
interconnected themes in the work of James Baldwin:
race, sexuality, and religion. Central to my thesis is
an examination of the ways in which Baldwin's work has
troubled readers and critics alike in his refusal both
to adhere to a single coherent ideology, and to be
labelled or categorised, which I argue has problematised
his place in both the American and African-American
canons.
This thesis argues for the importance of placing
Baldwin in the political and historical climates that
his four decades of writing came out of. By examining
the ways in which he responded to and wrote from a
variegated climate of Protest fiction, Integration and
Assimilation, Civil Rights, pre and post-Stonewall, and
the emergence of gay studies, this thesis argues that
Baldwin presciently foregrounds many of cultural
theory's largest debates. Baldwin's work repeatedly
questions not only the boundaries of black literature,
but how blackness itself might be constituted. How is
the canon formed? What, Baldwin's work demands, is
whiteness? What is homosexuality and homosexual
literature?