Kathy Glass

Exploring literary possibilities, Politics and Affect reads black women’s text—in particular Frances Harper’s “The Two Offers” (1859), Julia Collins’s The Curse of Caste (1865), Nella Larsen’s Quicksand (1928), and Danzy Senna’s Caucasia (1998)—as richly creative documents saturated with sociopolitical value. Interested in how African American women writers from the nineteenth century to the present have mined the politics of affect and emotion to document love, shame, and suffering in environments shaped by race, Kathy Glass gives sustained attention to the impact of racist affect on the black body, and examines how black women writers deploy emotional states to engender sociopolitical change.

Exploring literary possibilities, Politics and Affect reads black women’s text—in particular Frances Harper’s “The Two Offers” (1859), Julia Collins’s The Curse of Caste (1865), Nella Larsen’s Quicksand (1928), and Danzy Senna’s Caucasia (1998)—as richly creative documents saturated with sociopolitical value. Interested in how African American women writers from the nineteenth century to the present have mined the politics of affect and emotion to document love, shame, and suffering in environments shaped by race, Kathy Glass gives sustained attention to the impact of racist affect on the black body, and examines how black women writers deploy emotional states to engender sociopolitical change.

Courting Communities focuses on the writing and oratory of nineteenth-century African-American women whose racial uplift projects troubled the boundaries of race, nation and gender. In particular, it reexamines the politics of gender in nationalist movements and black women's creative response within and against both state and insurgent black nationalist discourses. CourtingCommunities highlights the ideas and rhetorical strategies of female activists considered to be less important than the prominent male nationalists. Yet their story is significant precisely because it does not fit into the pre-established categories of nationalism and leadership bequeathed to us from the past.

Courting Communities focuses on the writing and oratory of nineteenth-century African-American women whose racial uplift projects troubled the boundaries of race, nation and gender. In particular, it reexamines the politics of gender in nationalist movements and black women's creative response within and against both state and insurgent black nationalist discourses. CourtingCommunities highlights the ideas and rhetorical strategies of female activists considered to be less important than the prominent male nationalists. Yet their story is significant precisely because it does not fit into the pre-established categories of nationalism and leadership bequeathed to us from the past.