The first major twenty-first-century history of four hundred years of black writing, The Cambridge History of African American Literature presents a comprehensive overview of the literary traditions, oral and print, of African-descended peoples in the United States. Expert contributors, drawn from the United States and beyond, emphasize the dual nature of each text discussed as a work of art created by an individual and as a response to unfolding events in American cultural, political, and social history. Unprecedented in scope, sophistication, and accessibility, the volume draws together current scholarship in the field. It also looks ahead to suggest new approaches, new areas of study, and as yet undervalued writers and works. The Cambridge History of African American Literature is a major achievement both as a work of reference and as a compelling narrative and will remain essential reading for scholars and students in years to come.

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The Cambridge history of African American literature

For 2006 the bibliography continues its customary coverage of secondary writings published since 1900 in western European languages on slavery or the slave trade anywhere in the world: monographs, ...

Slavery: annual bibliographical supplement (2006)

Although emotion is increasingly central in theories of social change, the sociology of social movements and emotion continues to have a mix-and-stir quality. Through a microanalysis of abolitionist discourse, this dissertation observes how the two are systematically intertwined by status claimsmaking processes. To better explore the affective dynamics of protest rhetoric through which ‘social movements move,’ I construct a new synthetic theory of status as a moral-emotional resource, dependent upon cultural imaginaries and negotiated through rhetorical implicatures. Status-oriented moral emotions— including the egocentric and altruistic types of anger examined in this case study—can be aroused, altered, and rechanneled toward reform causes via dramaturgical claimsmaking. Moving beyond the predominance of logocentric accounts of immediatist abolitionism, I incorporate ethos and pathos to refer to the status implicatures of protest rhetoric (corresponding to ethos) and the provocative effects of these status implicatures (corresponding to pathos). As performed by prominent movement leaders, both means of status claimsmaking conditioned abolitionist charisma and reconditioned audience attitudes toward slavery. The ethos-pathos orientation of speakers though varied by race and gender, suggesting that ‘charisma’ itself is a privilege structured by status hierarchies and relative risks of sanctioning. In spite of racialization and subordination within abolitionism, black activists persisted in protest through creative rhetorics, such as implicit symbolic surgery upon status-beliefs and summoning emotional energy from heterodoxic status imaginaries. The proposed framework accounts better for abolitionism’s internal and external emotional dynamics, which were not always anteceded by discernible discursive shifts. Social movement theory therefore should be more mindful of the statusoriented moral emotions as well as how protest rhetoric mines them for social change.

Angry Abolitionists & The Rhetoric of Slavery: Minding the Moral Emotions in Social Movements

Before the Civil War, colonization schemes and black laws threatened to deport former slaves born in the United States. Birthright Citizens recovers the story of how African American activists remade national belonging through battles in legislatures, conventions, and courthouses. They faced formidable opposition, most notoriously from the US Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott. Still, Martha S. Jones explains, no single case defined their status. Former slaves studied law, secured allies, and conducted themselves like citizens, establishing their status through local, everyday claims. All along they argued that birth guaranteed their rights. With fresh archival sources and an ambitious reframing of constitutional law-making before the Civil War, Jones shows how the Fourteenth Amendment constitutionalized the birthright principle, and black Americans' aspirations were realized. Birthright Citizens tells how African American activists radically transformed the terms of citizenship for all Americans.

Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America

As a form of discursive practice, consciousness‐raising links recovery, recuperation, and the development of theory. The recovery of texts by women and recovery from the dynamics of suppression by which women's voices were silenced encompasses an enormous conversation among women through time. As a recuperative process criticism promotes an appreciation of women's artistry and eloquence and challenges the capacity of traditional theory to analyze or evaluate women's discourse. Finally, extracting theoretical principles from the practices of women through time suggests alternative ways of viewing rhetoric.

Consciousness-raising: linking theory, criticism, and practice

A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader.@@@The Captive Imagination: A Casebook on "The Yellow Wallpaper."@@@Margret Howth: A Story of To-Day.

The Floating Icon and the Fluid Text: Rereading the Narrative of Sojourner Truth

From mysteries to histories: Cultural pedagogy in Frances E. W. Harper's "Iola Leroy"

White People Do Not Know How to Behave at Entertainments Designed for Ladies and Gentlemen of Colour: William Brown's African and American Theater; Theatre, Society, and the Nation: Staging American Identities; The Federal Theatre Project: A Case Study

John Ernest

Papers

A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader.@@@The Captive Imagination: A Casebook on "The Yellow Wallpaper."@@@Margret Howth: A Story of To-Day.

The Floating Icon and the Fluid Text: Rereading the Narrative of Sojourner Truth

From mysteries to histories: Cultural pedagogy in Frances E. W. Harper's "Iola Leroy"

White People Do Not Know How to Behave at Entertainments Designed for Ladies and Gentlemen of Colour: William Brown's African and American Theater; Theatre, Society, and the Nation: Staging American Identities; The Federal Theatre Project: A Case Study

Authority and Alliance in the Letters of Henry Adams.