Genre and White Supremacy in the Postemancipation United States
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Genre and White Supremacy in the Postemancipation United States by Travis M Foster
How are we to comprehend, diagnose, and counter a system of racist subjugation so ordinary it has become utterly asymptomatic? Challenging the prevailing literary critical inclination toward what makes texts exceptional or distinctive, Genre and White Supremacy in the Postemancipation United States underscores the urgent importance of genre for tracking conventionality as it enters into, constitutes, and reproduces ordinary life. In the wake of emancipation's failed promise, two developments unfolded: white supremacy amassed new mechanisms and procedures for reproducing racial hierarchy; and black freedom developed new practices for collective expression and experimentation. This new racial ordinary came into being through new literary and cultural genres--including campus novels, the Ladies' Home Journal, Civil War elegies, and gospel sermons. Through the postemancipation interplay between aesthetic conventions and social norms, genre became a major influence in how Americans understood their social and political affiliations, their citizenship, and their race.Travis M. Foster traces this thick history through four decades following the Civil War, equipping us to understand ordinary practices of resistance more fully and to resist ordinary procedures of subjugation more effectively. In the process, he provides a model for how the study of popular genre can reinvigorate our methods for historicizing the everyday.
Foster's study is especially valuable in the wake of George Floyd's murder in May 2020 and the subsequent urgent debates around racism* Sarah Robertson, Modern Language Review *
Travis M. Foster is an Associate Professor of English and the Academic Director of Women's and Gender Studies at Villanova University.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780198838098 |
| ISBN 10 | 0198838093 |
| Title | Genre and White Supremacy in the Postemancipation United States |
| Author | Travis M Foster |
| Series | Oxford Studies In American Literary History |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Year published | 2019-11-28 |
| Number of pages | 178 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |