Seizing the Word offers a comprehensive reading of the work of W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), a pivotal figure in the intellectual life of nineteenth- and twentieth-century America. As a historian, journalist, novelist, poet, and social and literary critic, this extraordinary man profoundly influenced our understanding of the African American experience.

Following his initial discussion of Du Bois's earliest writing, Keith E. Byerman posits The Souls of Black Folk (1903) as a master text that established the tropes of doubleconsciousness and the veil for which Du Bois is known, and incorporated the various genres through which he voiced his understanding of the world. The remainder of the study discusses Du Bois's works as elaborations of the master text within and against the contemporary discourses on history, art, and self. Throughout Byerman examines the connections between the personal and intellectual aspects of Du Bois's life to reveal the intense engagement with moral and ideological issues found even in texts that Du Bois represented as “objective.” At the same time, in order to present some of the complexity and conflict that runs through Du Bois's work, Byerman identifies the tensions and patterns in Du Bois's writing that cross disciplines or genres. Instead of focusing on one aspect of Du Bois's career, Seizing the Word attempts a more synthetic approach, primarily by examining Du Bois in terms of contemporary literary and cultural theory, most notably Lacan's Law of the Father and Erikson's work on identity.