Twelfth Reading Group:
Black Lives Matter and Nineteenth-Century American Literary Scholarship and Teaching
Zoom, 24 July 2020
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Reading:
Frederick Douglass, 'What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?' Sojourner Truth, 'Ain't I a Woman?' Around 15 scholars met up virtually to discuss how nineteenth-century American literary studies, broadly, and BrANCA, more narrowly, might respond to the Black Lives Matter movement. Over the course of two hours we covered research, teaching, and institutional questions. The conversation began with thoughts on our two chosen set texts—Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” and the speech that has come to be known as “Ain’t I a Woman?” by Sojourner Truth. We started by talking about the differences between the first recording of Truth’s speech in 1851 and the substantially altered France Gage rendition of it in 1863. We wondered about questions of authenticity and why it was that the latter version—seemingly without Truth’s blessing—became the canonical one. Comparisons here were made with Charles Chesnutt’s usage of racial caricature. Similarly, questions of voice, oratory, location, and authenticity were found in Douglass. |
Grace Lynne Haynes, Founding Mother, July 2020
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You can find out about the 1851 and 1863 versions of the speech at The Sojourner Truth Project: https://www.thesojournertruthproject.com. Thank you to Xine Yao for the recommendation.
We then explicitly talked about teaching African American materials in the context of UK universities. A major challenge that many of us had faced was a tendency among students to see “race” as an American problem, thus obscuring the ways in which racialization and transatlantic slavery were very much part of British culture, especially to do with its empire and its legacies. Some had tried comparative approaches to offset this recurrent problem, particularly emphasizing transatlantic overlaps. The history of abolitionism and ex-enslaved people in the UK was another approach. The strength of the narrative of British liberalism—whereby Britain was directly responsible for ending slavery—was another point of discussion, not least as some narratives of ex-enslaved people at times endorse it. There were also thoughts on how Black British fiction is taught—commonly it is done through a post-1948 lens.
Suggested study areas for thinking about transatlantic relations and British attitudes to race included:
The active effects of Black Lives Matter are being felt in many universities. We thought about how students in Bristol might respond to the toppling of the Colston statue and the links with the Rhodes Must Fall movement in Oxford, among other things. The protests had also made some of us want to make the teaching and research of African American materials more multifaceted—embracing joy as well as pain, and genres outside the slave or passing narrative.
The wider context of teaching African American materials in British universities was thought about. The institutional contexts of critical race theory seemed significant to a number of us—especially the defunding of centres dedicated to cultural and critical race theory by Thatcher, as well as recent positive moves like UCL’s new Sarah Parker Redmond Centre. In terms of BrANCA we agreed it would be good to circulate these notes; to have another reading group with lesser-known African American materials (The Blind African Slave was mentioned as a possibility); and to consider putting together some relevant materials, primary, secondary, and theoretical.
Our discussion on research was shorter after this. But we shared some recent books of theory and nineteenth-century literary studies that we had enjoyed and outlined some possibly exciting directions for new research, including: comparative studies of attitudes to race in the US and Russia; working against common narratives and myths of race; and a critical Civil War monuments database.
Suggested study areas for thinking about transatlantic relations and British attitudes to race included:
- Douglass’s later visits to Britain
- US texts that discuss life and attitudes to race in Britain
- British newspaper reviews of abolitionist speakers and novels
- Black perspectives outside the Atlantic
The active effects of Black Lives Matter are being felt in many universities. We thought about how students in Bristol might respond to the toppling of the Colston statue and the links with the Rhodes Must Fall movement in Oxford, among other things. The protests had also made some of us want to make the teaching and research of African American materials more multifaceted—embracing joy as well as pain, and genres outside the slave or passing narrative.
The wider context of teaching African American materials in British universities was thought about. The institutional contexts of critical race theory seemed significant to a number of us—especially the defunding of centres dedicated to cultural and critical race theory by Thatcher, as well as recent positive moves like UCL’s new Sarah Parker Redmond Centre. In terms of BrANCA we agreed it would be good to circulate these notes; to have another reading group with lesser-known African American materials (The Blind African Slave was mentioned as a possibility); and to consider putting together some relevant materials, primary, secondary, and theoretical.
Our discussion on research was shorter after this. But we shared some recent books of theory and nineteenth-century literary studies that we had enjoyed and outlined some possibly exciting directions for new research, including: comparative studies of attitudes to race in the US and Russia; working against common narratives and myths of race; and a critical Civil War monuments database.
