Subjects and Citizens: Nation, Race, and Gender from Oroonoko to Anita Hill

Published by Duke University Press 1995

Subjects and Citizens

Nation, Race, and Gender from Oroonoko to Anita Hill

Edited by: Michael Moon and Cathy N. Davidson
With contributions by: Annette Kolodny and Stephanie Athey

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822382393

Overview
Contents

About this book

Focusing on intersecting issues of nation, race, and gender, this volume inaugurates new models for American literary and cultural history. Subjects and Citizens reveals the many ways in which a wide range of canonical and non-canonical writing contends with the most crucial social, political, and literary issues of our past and present. Defining the landscape of the New American literary history, these essays are united by three interrelated concerns: ideas of origin (where does "American literature" begin?), ideas of nation (what does "American literature" mean?), and ideas of race and gender (what does "American literature" include and exclude and how?). Work by writers as diverse as Aphra Behn, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Frances Harper, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herman Melville, William Faulkner, Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Bharati Mukherjee, Booker T. Washington, Mark Twain, Kate Chopin, Am�rico Paredes, and Toni Morrison are discussed from several theoretical perspectives, using a variety of methodologies. Issues of the "frontier" and the "border" as well as those of coloniality and postcoloniality are explored. In each case, these essays emphasize the ideological nature of national identity and, more specifically, the centrality of race and gender to our concept of nationhood. Collected from recent issues of American Literature, with three new essays added, Subjects and Citizens charts the new directions being taken in American literary studies. Contributors. Daniel Cooper Alarc�n, Lori Askeland, Stephanie Athey, Nancy Bentley, Lauren Berlant, Michele A. Birnbaum, Kristin Carter-Sanborn, Russ Castronovo, Joan Dayan, Julie Ellison, Sander L. Gilman, Karla F. C. Holloway, Annette Kolodny, Barbara Ladd, Lora Romero, Ram�n Sald�var, Maggie Sale, Siobhan Senier, Timothy Sweet, Maurice Wallace, Elizabeth Young

Author / Editor information

Michael Moon is Associate Professor of English at Duke University and Associate Editor of American Literature. He is the author of Disseminating Whitman: Revision and Corporeality in "Leaves of Grass."

Cathy N. Davidson is Professor of English at Duke University and Editor of American Literature. She is the author of numerous books, including Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America.

Reviews

"This superb collection demonstrates the exciting new work being done in American literary history and criticism. Its many wide-ranging, richly detailed contributions are certain to shape and extend cultural and political debates about race, class, gender, and American nationhood. Subjects and Citizens is among the best books of critical and cultural studies I have read."—William E. Cain, Wellesley College

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Introduction Michael Moon and Cathy Davidson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I
Letting Go Our Grand Obsessions: Notes Toward a New Literary History of the American Frontiers Annette Kolodny Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	9
Oroonoko's Gendered Economies of Honor/Horror: Reframing Colonial Discourses Studies in the Americas Stephanie Athey and Daniel Alarcon Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	27
Race and Sensibility in the Early Republic: Ann Eliza Bleecker and Sarah Wentworth Morton Julie Ellison Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	57
Vanishing Americans: Gender, Empire, and New Historicism Lora Romero Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	87
Part II
Amorous Bondage: Poe, Ladies, and Slaves Joan Dayan Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	109
Critiques from Within: Antebellum Projects of Resistance Maggie Sale Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
Radical Configurations of History in the Era of American Slavery Russ Castronovo Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	169
White Slaves: The Mulatto Hero in Antebellum Fiction Nancy Bentley Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	195
Part III
Masculinity and Self-Performance in the Life ofBlack Hawk Timothy Sweet Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
Constructing the Black Masculine: Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and the Sublimits of African American Autobiography Maurice Wallace Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	245
Mark Twain and the Diseases of the Jews Sander Gilman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	271
Warring Fictions: lola Leroy and the Color of Gender Elizabeth Young Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	293
"Alien Hands": Kate Chopin and the Colonization of Race Michele Birnbaum Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	319
Part IV
"The Direction of the Howling": Nationalism and the Color Line in Absalom, Absalom! Barbara Ladd Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	345
Border Subjects and Transnational Sites: Americo Paredes's The Hammon and the Beans and Other Stories Ramon Saldivar Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	373
Remodeling the Model Home in Uncle Tom's Cabin and Beloved Lori Askeland Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	395
A Zuni Raconteur Dons the Junco Shirt: Gender and Narrative Style in the Story of Coyote and Junco Siobhan Senier Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	417
"We Murder Who We Were": Jasmine and the Violence of Identity Kristin Sanborn Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	433
The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Harriet Jacobs, Frances Harper, Anita Hill Lauren Berlant Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	455
The Body Politic Karla Holloway Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	481
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	497

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Pages
- Main content: 535

eBook

Published: June 15, 1995
ISBN: 9780822382393