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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
The Black Wanderer: Reading The Black Diaspora, Resistance, And Becoming In The History Of Mary Prince In The Classroom, Nicole Carr
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
This paper examines The History of Mary Prince as a pedagogical tool for exploring complexities within the Black Diaspora. As Paul Gilroy’s articulations of the Black Atlantic inform my approach, Prince’s circuitous journey through the West Indies and England situates her process of becoming as one mired in longing and loss. Encouraging students to consider Prince as a wandering soul in search of not only freedom, but also solid familiar connections lays the foundation for merging her narrative with other enslaved Black people traversing countries and regions on ships against their will. Ample research material available on the survivors of …
Black Lives, White Witnesses: An Argument For A Presentist Approach To Teaching Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, Sharon Smith
Black Lives, White Witnesses: An Argument For A Presentist Approach To Teaching Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, Sharon Smith
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
This essay outlines a presentist approach to teaching Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1688), in which a white woman witnesses a Black man’s brutal execution at the hands of enslavers. This approach explores the capacity of Behn’s novel—a colonialist narrative scholars frequently identify as troubling or frustrating—to generate discussions about “white witnessing,” particularly white people’s consumption of images of Black people in peril. This includes recent videos of Black people killed by police or white citizen vigilantes. Many Black individuals identify these videos as traumatizing, frequently noting how they have failed to spur structural reform. Of central concern in the classroom discussion …
Unmasking Polly: Race And Disguise In Eighteenth-Century Plantation Space, Kristen Hanley Cardozo
Unmasking Polly: Race And Disguise In Eighteenth-Century Plantation Space, Kristen Hanley Cardozo
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera has influenced popular culture since its debut. Its 1729 sequel, Polly, has been understudied by literary critics, perhaps because of its suppression in Gay’s lifetime. However, Polly offers scholars new views on British imperialism before an active abolition movement in Britain. Gay confronts the evils of colonialism through his theatrical use of disguise. While other Caribbean plays of the period allow white characters to reinvent themselves abroad, in Polly disguise only intensifies the self, while the higher stakes of plantation space are where the characters meet the fates originally designated for them in The …
Race And Racism In Austen Spaces: Eroticizing Men Of Empire In Austen, Kerry Sinanan
Race And Racism In Austen Spaces: Eroticizing Men Of Empire In Austen, Kerry Sinanan
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
No abstract provided.
Knowledge Networks: Contested Geographies In The History Of Mary Prince, Leah M. Thomas
Knowledge Networks: Contested Geographies In The History Of Mary Prince, Leah M. Thomas
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
The History of Mary Prince, a West-Indian Slave, Related by Herself (1831) is the first published woman’s slave narrative. In her History, Prince describes horrendous physical violence to which she and other enslaved peoples of African descent are subjected as well as the corresponding psychological and sexual abuse they endure. While Prince “speaks” the sexual abuse to some extent, how she knows what she knows goes unspoken. She expresses her knowledge of reading and writing and, at times, of the law, but she does not explain how she obtains this knowledge or knows what she knows. Her optimism to …
Mansfield Park By Kate Hamill (And Jane Austen), Christopher Nagle
Mansfield Park By Kate Hamill (And Jane Austen), Christopher Nagle
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
This article reviews the world premiere of Kate Hamill's Mansfield Park directed by Stuart Carden and produced for the Northlight Theatre in Chicago in November and December 2018. Hamill’s bold new adaptation is notable for foregrounding the contexts of empire and the slave trade undergirding the novel, and in ultimately offering a feminist fairy-tale of radical self-assertion and self-determination for its heroine.