Barbara Foley

A leading authority on twentieth-century U.S. literary radicalism, Barbara Foley is a Distinguished Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers-Newark. She has authored five books: Telling the Truth: The Theory and Practice of Documentary Fiction (1986); Radical Representations: Politics and Form in U.S. Proletarian Fiction, 1929-1941 (1993); Spectres of 1919: Class and Nation in the Making of the New Negro (2003); Wrestling with the Left: the Making of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (2010); and Jean Toomer: Race, Repression, and Revolution (2014). She has published widely in the fields of Marxist theory, African-American literature, and the literature of the Left; her current book project is provisionally titled "Marxist Literary Criticism Today: An Introduction." Prof. Foley is president of the Radical Caucus of the Modern Language Association and vice-president of the Marxist journal Science & Society, where she serves on the manuscript committee. She is also chair of the Task Force on Combating Racism of NOW-NJ.