Kiefer Holland
Published: 21 January 2019
How nineteenth-century African American antislavery authors and orators responded to, resisted, and subverted the US’ ideological perception of freedom as something to be fought for, gained, and justified, solely in terms of dominant constructions of white masculinity.
University of Edinburgh
How nineteenth-century African American antislavery authors and orators responded to, resisted, and subverted the US’ ideological perception of freedom as something to be fought for, gained, and justified, solely in terms of dominant constructions of white masculinity.
In doing this, it will examine the works of David Walker, Maria Stewart, Josiah Henson, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman, with a chapter dedicated to each in my thesis. Each chapter will introduce and examine current scholarship on the individual being discussed (e.g. Rogers (2014), Henderson (2013), Winks (1971), Painter (1996), McDowell (1991), and Sernett (2007)), before expanding upon this scholarship using the thesis’ interdisciplinary Black Studies methodology. This theoretical framework will primarily be developed by adapting Celeste-Marie Bernier’s work on the “bifurcation” of Black heroism through Rafia Zafar’s study of “masked” African American expression to form a new approach to examining Black responses to white ideological constructions. Additional scholarship which is vital to the thesis’ theoretical framework includes that of Henry Louis Gates Jr., W. Lawrence Hogue, bell hooks, Judith Butler and Michael Kimmel.
First published: 21 January 2019