Department of English

Roland L. Williams, Jr.

rolandw@temple.edu
(215) 204-1807

Educated at the University of Pennsylvania, Roland L. Williams, Jr. is the  author of African American Autobiography and the Quest for Freedom,  which describes how classic slave narratives treat learning, in the words of Frederick Douglass, as “the pathway from slavery to freedom.” 

 

His current research interests concern black characterization in literature and cinema through the last century.  He has a forthcoming book entitled Black Male Frames: How African Americans appeared in a Century of Hollywood Cinema (1903-2003).  The study shows that slavery in a land sold on liberty produced stereotypes that passed from the stage to the screen by way of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

The Game Huck Got is his work in progress.  It is a collection of essays on fiction where a black character puts on a false front along the lines of the figure named Rinehart in Invisible Man.

He is also a contributor to the critical sourcebook African American Authors along with the Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance and The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. 

Williams has published critiques in the African American Review, Journal of Modern Literature, and Research in African Literatures as well as the Journal of American Folklore.  His fiction has appeared in Obsidian II.