This project analyzes what happens in instances of intercultural
misunderstanding related to art and literature by using the controversy over William Styron’s novel The Confessions of Nat Turner (1968) as a case study. This is an important question for the humanities that, while being historical in nature, also speaks to the present moment. This controversy elicited questions about different audience reactions to the novel, often based on cultural or political affiliations, and brought to the fore questions regarding the appropriateness of authors writing about characters who are from a different ethnic or cultural background than their own, especially when it comes to writing about historical characters from historically marginalized groups. This project deals with issues relevant to Literary Studies, Cultural Studies, and Communication. With the cultural and political backdrop of the postwar era and the civil rights and burgeoning black arts movements of the 1960s, Sutz asks how the postwar literary marketplace organized and used race as a marker in popular fiction and nonfiction by analyzing the publication history of Styron’s novel. The primary research question Sutz investigates in this dissertation project is: how did the controversy surrounding William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner impact the marketing, sales, distribution, reception, and legacy of the novel?