"It's nation time" : cultural nationalism in the artistic projects of Walt Whitman and Amiri Baraka

This is a comparative study of cultural nationalism in the work of Walt Whitman and Amiri Baraka. I am using these two artists to investigate the different ways that poetry can be used to instill national consciousness. In this thesis I will show how Whitman and Baraka used similar poetic methods and theories of nationality to fulfill agendas that are perceived very differently. The purpose of my study is also to evaluate cultural nationalism in the United States as a political practice which can operate at different moments as both American patriotism and black nationalism.