Anna Hartnell is a senior lecturer in contemporary literature at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research focuses on the intersections between literature and politics, with special emphasis on race and representation. Her first book, Rewriting Exodus: American Futures from Du Bois to Obama (2011), explores the trajectory of the black freedom narrative in the US. Her forthcoming second book, After Katrina: Race, Neoliberalism, and the End of the American Century, looks at the re-imagining of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and is particularly attentive to the re-mapping of its racial geography.