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Race Youth In Twentieth-Century American Literature And Culture, Claire E. Lenviel
Race Youth In Twentieth-Century American Literature And Culture, Claire E. Lenviel
Theses and Dissertations--English
Race Youth in Twentieth-Century American Literature and Culture argues for the centrality of black youth, both real and literary, to the trajectories of African American literature and its repudiation of white supremacy. Drawing on research into the rise of the adolescent and teenager as distinct social categories, I argue that age-based subjectivity should inform how we read race-based subjectivity. My first chapter explores how early twentieth-century black periodicals push back against white supremacist theories of human development in an explicit appeal to what I call “race youth,” the children and adolescents who would take up the mantle of racial uplift. …
Wilderness Of Freedom: Slave Narratives, Captivity Narratives, And Genre Transformation In Keckley's Behind The Scenes, Hannah Gautsch
Wilderness Of Freedom: Slave Narratives, Captivity Narratives, And Genre Transformation In Keckley's Behind The Scenes, Hannah Gautsch
Theses and Dissertations--English
As a modiste well-versed in the social expectations of the domestic world, Elizabeth Keckley crafted an autobiography that would appeal to this wide variety of audiences. Throughout the 1850s, women across the nation negotiated the terms of True Womanhood and identified activism as a space where women could engage with national concerns. At the same time, literary production in the US was increasing exponentially, creating room for literature to be used as a means of social change. Contemporary scholars have devoted much attention to the ways Keckley’s Behind the Scenes combines elements of multiple genres to assure its long-term survival …