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Articles 1 - 6 of 6
Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
"The Imagination And Construction Of The Black Criminal In American Literature, 1741-1910", Emahunn Campbell
"The Imagination And Construction Of The Black Criminal In American Literature, 1741-1910", Emahunn Campbell
Doctoral Dissertations
My dissertation examines the origins of the perception of black people as criminally predisposed by arguing that during eighteenth and nineteenth-century America, crime committed by black people was used as a major trope in legal, literary, and scientific discourses, deeming them inherently criminal. Furthermore, I contend that enslaved and free black people often used criminal acts, including murder, theft, and literacy, as avenues toward freedom. However, their resistance was used as a justification for slavery in the South and discrimination in the North. By examining a diverse set of materials such as confessional literature, plantation management literature, (social) scientific studies, …
The Literary Significance Of Herman Melville’S Benito Cereno: An Analytical Reflection On Benito Cereno As A Fictional Narrative, Dani Kaiser
4997 English: Capstone
In Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno (1855), Captain Amasa Delano discovers a distressed slave ship in need of aid, only to later find out that his perception of the dire situation was completely incorrect. Melville’s novella is derived from Delano’s nonfiction account of the experience, titled Narrative of Voyages and Travels in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres (1817). This paper focuses on three questions that demonstrate why Melville wrote a novella almost completely derived from a nonfiction account of the events aboard the ship. In order to understand why Melville’s novella is powerful, one must ask, as an overarching question why …
Creating Difference: The Legal Production Of Race In American Slavery, Shaun N. Ramdin
Creating Difference: The Legal Production Of Race In American Slavery, Shaun N. Ramdin
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
This dissertation examines the legal construction and development of racial difference as considered in literature written or set during the final years of American slavery. While there had consistently been a conceptual correspondence between black skin and enslavement, race or racial difference did not become the unqualified explanation of enslavement until fairly late in the institution’s history. Specifically, as slavery’s stability became increasingly threatened through the nineteenth century by abolitionism and racial slippage, race became the singular and explicit rationale for its existence and perpetuation. I argue that the primary discourse of this justificatory rationale was legal: through law race …
The Novel Of Sentiment In A Short Story: Reflections On Teaching “Theresa”, Adam Kotlarczyk
The Novel Of Sentiment In A Short Story: Reflections On Teaching “Theresa”, Adam Kotlarczyk
Faculty Publications & Research
I introduced “Theresa” in between units on “The Age of Reason” and “American Romanticism.” Thus it was foregrounded by works like Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography and Phyllis Wheatley’s “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” and followed by stories by Irving, Hawthorne, and Poe. Strictly speaking, this puts “Theresa” slightly out of sequence; its serialization in 1828 precedes by at least ten years the works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Irving that we study. Despite this, the text functioned well as a transitional piece, although I would consider moving it deeper into the Romantic unit. The exotic setting, relative to our other …
Features Of Independence: Teaching “Theresa - A Haytien Tale”, Michael P. Dean
Features Of Independence: Teaching “Theresa - A Haytien Tale”, Michael P. Dean
Faculty Publications & Research
One of the core beliefs of the Illinois Math and Science Academy (IMSA) states that we believe that “diverse perspectives enrich understanding and inspire discovery and creativity,” and in keeping with that aim, I chose to participate in the Just Teach One: Early African American Print project. As a school primarily focused on STEM subjects, IMSA still offers a robust English curriculum that values and supports a diverse literary canon, and our incoming sophomores are asked to complete a two-part Literary Explorations course that features America texts from colonial era up to the 21st century.
Overflowing Power In Self-Ownership: Finding Freedom In Toni Morrison’S A Mercy, Darby Witek
Overflowing Power In Self-Ownership: Finding Freedom In Toni Morrison’S A Mercy, Darby Witek
The Corinthian
Toni Morrison uses tragic stories of young girls to display societal themes throughout her novels. Morrison’s work in A Mercy follows the same trajectory, although Morrison uses girls of many different backgrounds to display her ideas. Morrison sets the time of her novel in late seventeenth century America, before slavery is constructed in the same racial binary many think of today: white masters and black slaves. Placing A Mercy in the early ages of American slavery allows an exploration of bondage defined by class rather than race, creating a larger space for agency to prosper—since station is not defined by …