Description
This volume charts the ways in which African American literature fosters transitions between material cultures and contexts from 1830 to 1850, and showcases work that explores how African American literature and lived experiences shaped one another. Chapters focus on the interplay between pivotal political and social events, including emancipation in the West Indies, the Irish Famine, and the Fugitive Slave Act, and key African American cultural productions, such as the poetry of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, the writings of David Walker, and the genre of the Slave Narrative. Chapters also examine the relationship between African American literature and a variety of institutions including, the press, and the post office. The chapters are grouped together in three sections, each of which is focused on transitions within a particular geographic scale: the local, the national, and the transnational. Taken together, they offer a crucial account of how African Americans used the written word to respond to and drive the events and institutions of the 1830s, 1840s, and beyond.
Table of Contents
Introduction. The age of David Walker Benjamin Fagan; Part I. Local Transitions: 1. Antebellum literary societies, polite learning, and traditions of modernity Carla L. Peterson; 2. 'By a Young Lady of Color': Black women and the antislavery press Jasmine Nichole Cobb; 3. The poetics of education in antebellum New Orleans Juliane Braun; 4. Gentility, resistance, and the Nat turner's rebellion in early African American poetry Faith Barrett; Part II. National Transitions: 5. Copyright, fugitivity, and the fight for self-ownership in early African American literature Emahunn Raheem Ali Campbell; 6. The communications revolution and the networked path to freedom Nihad M. Farooq; 7. The fugitive slave act and the United States of slavery Susana Ashton; Part III. Transnational Transitions: 8. Cosmopolitanism, character, and the theories of early African American literature Hannah Spahn; 9. Race, slavery, and emigration in black women's life writing Pia Wiegmink; 10. The impact of West Indian emancipation on African American poetry Nicole N. Aljoe; 11. La Escalera, sentiment, and revolution in the antebellum novel David Luis-Brown; 12. Europe, Mexico, and the African American 1848 John Levi Barnard; 13. The Irish famine and the lessons of environmental history Ian Finseth.
