Michael C. Cohen

TL;DR: This article argued that the genteel poets hold on to a set of values hopelessly out-of-date (hence "late"), they also mistakenly endorse a tradition that is not even theirs (thus they are "displaced late Victorians").

TL;DR: In fact, very few Americans cherished Whittier for his antislavery activism before the American Civil War as discussed by the authors, and this concentrated disavowal of his anti-slavery work meant that readers had to ignore most of his poetry in order to celebrate him as a poet.

TL;DR: In a 1902 interview with the Chicago Tribune, Paul Laurence Dunbar was asked, "And when you do write have you more pleasure in negro songs or in others?" Sometimes I am fascinated by the negro song," Dunbar responded as discussed by the authors.

TL;DR: The contraband song, a genre of poetry and music popular during the American Civil War, has been studied by Cohen as mentioned in this paper, who argues that the contraband songs offer a particularly rich opportunity to map the contested terrain of wartime culture.