Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Introduction: New Essays on “Race,” Writing, and Representation in Early America

Introduction: New Essays on “Race,” Writing, and Representation in Early America RobeRt s. LevIne University of Maryland Introduction New Essays on "Race," Writing, and Representation in Early America The essays in this issue of Early American Literature are linked by their interest in race, which remains a problematic term in early American studies (see, for example, the roundtable on race in the 2006 Early American Literature [41.2]). Inspired by Henry Louis Gates's edited collection "Race," Writing, and Difference (1986) and Toni Morrison's "Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature" (1989), US Americanists of the past several decades have tended to address race in relation to black-white binaries; but as Ralph Bauer and others have shown, race in early American studies should also be thought of in relation to creolization, nationalism, colonialism, a range of ethnicities, capitalism, styles of discourse, and native studies. In the hybridized space of the Americas in particular, what made a person "white" or "black" or "red" when there were interracial sexual relations across the color line? And when did color really matter, and in what ways? Reflecting on Thomas Jefferson's rumored sexual relations with his slave Sally Hemings, William Wells Brown, in his 1853 Clotel, presents light-complected slaves whose genealogical connections to "black" http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Early American Literature University of North Carolina Press

Introduction: New Essays on “Race,” Writing, and Representation in Early America

Download PDF
7 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/university-of-north-carolina-press/introduction-new-essays-on-race-writing-and-representation-in-early-5OERThOZHN

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © University of North Carolina Press
ISSN
1534-147X
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

RobeRt s. LevIne University of Maryland Introduction New Essays on "Race," Writing, and Representation in Early America The essays in this issue of Early American Literature are linked by their interest in race, which remains a problematic term in early American studies (see, for example, the roundtable on race in the 2006 Early American Literature [41.2]). Inspired by Henry Louis Gates's edited collection "Race," Writing, and Difference (1986) and Toni Morrison's "Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature" (1989), US Americanists of the past several decades have tended to address race in relation to black-white binaries; but as Ralph Bauer and others have shown, race in early American studies should also be thought of in relation to creolization, nationalism, colonialism, a range of ethnicities, capitalism, styles of discourse, and native studies. In the hybridized space of the Americas in particular, what made a person "white" or "black" or "red" when there were interracial sexual relations across the color line? And when did color really matter, and in what ways? Reflecting on Thomas Jefferson's rumored sexual relations with his slave Sally Hemings, William Wells Brown, in his 1853 Clotel, presents light-complected slaves whose genealogical connections to "black"

Journal

Early American Literature – University of North Carolina Press

Published: Jul 3, 2011

There are no references for this article.