Introductrion : Ellison's joking / Ross Posnock -- Ralph Ellison's invented life : a meeting with the ancestors / Lawrence Jackson -- Ellison and the black church : the gospel according to Ralph / Laura Saunders -- Ellison, photography, and the origins of invisibility / Sara Blair -- Ralph Ellison's music lessons / Paul Allen Anderson -- Ralph Ellison's constitutional faith / Gregg Crane -- Ralph Ellison and the politics of melancholia / Anne Anlin Cheng -- Invisible Ellison : the fight to be a Negro leader / Tim Parrish -- Ellison's experimental attitude and the technologies of illumination / John S. Wright -- Female iconography in Invisible man / Shelly Eversley -- Chaos not quite controlled : Ellison's uncompleted transit to Juneteenth / Kenneth W. Warren -- Ralph Ellison, Hannah Arendt, and the meaning of politics / Ross Posnock -- Dry bones / Eric J. Sundquist.