Mark Christian Thompson is an Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. He is interested in 19th and 20th Century American, British, and German literature, Modernism, African-American literature and culture, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, literary theory, philosophy and aesthetics. His book Black Fascisms: Fascism in African American Literature and Culture Between the Wars is forthcoming from University of Virginia Press. The essay included in this reader won an Honorable Mention for African American Review's Joe Weixlmann Award for Outstanding Essay, 2004-5.