African American Literature in Transition, 1800–1830: Volume 2, 1800–1830

This volume considers texts produced between 1800 and 1830, exploring themes such as print culture, Illustration and the narrative form.

Jasmine Nichole Cobb (Edited by)

9781108429078, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 May 2021

366 pages
23.4 x 15.8 x 2.5 cm, 0.67 kg

'… AALT is a welcome addition to the bookshelves of scholars of nineteenth-century African American literature specifically, or for scholars of nineteenth-century American literature generally; it will also be of great interest to scholars who specialize in histories of organizational, print, and visual culture of the period.' Dana Murphy, Early American Literature

African American literature in the years between 1800 and 1830 emerged from significant transitions in the cultural, technological, and political circulation of ideas. Transformations included increased numbers of Black organizations, shifts in the physical mobility of Black peoples, expanded circulation of abolitionist and Black newsprint as well as greater production of Black authored texts and images. The perpetuation of slavery in the early American republic meant that many people of African descent conveyed experiences of bondage or promoted abolition in complex ways, relying on a diverse array of print and illustrative forms. Accordingly, this volume takes a thematic approach to African American literature from 1800 to 1830, exploring Black organizational life before 1830, movement and mobility in African American literature, and print culture in circulation, illustration, and the narrative form.

Introduction Jasmine Nichole Cobb
Part I. Black Organizational Life before 1830: 1. Race, writing, and eschatological hope, 1800-1830 Maurice Wallace
2. Daniel Coker, David Walker, and the politics of dialogue with whites in early nineteenth-century African American literature William L. Andrews
3. Black entrepreneurship, economic self-determination and early print in Antebellum Brooklyn Prithi Kanakamedala
Part II. Movement and Mobility in African American Literature: 4. Early African American literature and the British Empire, 1808-1835 Joseph Rezek
5. Robert Roberts's The House Servant's Directory and the Performance of Stability in African American Print, 1800–1830 Britt Rusert
6. Dream visions in early Black autobiography
or, why Frederick Douglass doesn't dream Bryan Sinche
Part III. Print Culture in Circulation: 7. Reading, Black feminism, and the press around 1827 Teresa Zackodnik
8. Theresa and the early transatlantic mixed-race heroine: Black solidarity in Freedom's Journal Brigitte Fielder
9. Redemption, the historical imagination, and early Black biographical writing Stefan Wheelock
Part IV. Illustration and the Narrative Form: 10. Theorizing vision and selfhood in early Black writing and art Sarah Blackwood
11. Embodying activism, bearing witness: the portraits of early African American ministers in Philadelphia Aston Gonzalez
12. Visual insubordination within early African American portraiture and illustrated books Martha J. Cutter.

Subject Areas: Black & Asian studies [JFSL3], Society & culture: general [JF], Slavery & abolition of slavery [HBTS], Literary reference works [DSR], Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF]