Irvin J. Hunt is an Assistant Professor of English, African American Studies, and the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His articles have appeared or are forthcoming in American Literature, American Literary History, Public Books, History and Humor: British and American Perspectives, Contemporaries at Post45, African American Literature in Transition, 1940-50, and American Quarterly. His first book Dreaming of the Present: Time, Aesthetics, and the Black Cooperative Movement is forthcoming with UNC Press (2021).