Constituting Americans: Cultural Anxiety and Narrative FormEver since the founders drafted "We the People," "we" have been at pains to work out the contradictions in their formulation, to fix in words precisely what it means to be American. Constituting Americans rethinks the way that certain writers of the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century contributed to this project; in doing so, it revises the traditional narrative of U.S. literary history, restoring an essential chapter to the story of an emerging American cultural identity. In diverse ways, very different writers—including Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, Harriet Wilson, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Gertrude Stein—participated in the construction and dissemination of an American identity, but none was entirely at ease in the culture they all helped to define. Evident in their work is a haunting sense of their telling someone else’s story, a discomfort that Priscilla Wald reads in the context of legal and political debates about citizenship and personhood that marked the emergence of the United States as a nation and a world power. From early-nineteenth-century Supreme Court cases to turn-of-the-century Jim Crow and immigration legislation, from the political speeches of Abraham Lincoln to the historical work of Woodrow Wilson, nation-builders addressed the legal, political, and historical paradoxes of American identity. Against the backdrop of their efforts, Wald shows how works such as Douglass’s autobiographical narratives, Melville’s Pierre, Wilson’s Our Nig, Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folks, and Stein’s The Making of Americans responded, through formal innovations, to the aggressive demands for literary participation in the building of that nation. The conversation that emerges among these literary works challenges the definitions and genres that largely determine not only what works are read, but also how they are read in classrooms in the United States today. Offering insight into the relationship of storytelling to national identity, Constituting Americans will compel the attention of those with an interest in American literature, American studies, and cultural studies. |
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Page vii
... of History 172 4 A " Losing - Self Sense " : The Making of Americans and the Anxiety of Identity 237 Coda : An American " We " 299 Notes 305 Selected Bibliography 353 Index 375 АА AL BC BG BS Anthony Appiah , " The Contents.
... of History 172 4 A " Losing - Self Sense " : The Making of Americans and the Anxiety of Identity 237 Coda : An American " We " 299 Notes 305 Selected Bibliography 353 Index 375 АА AL BC BG BS Anthony Appiah , " The Contents.
Page xi
... Notes on the State of Virginia NWL Letters of Noah Webster NWS Noah Webster Speller ON 00 Harriet E. Wilson , Our Nig , or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black Otto H. Olsen , ed . , The Thin Disguise P PF PH PL PP PR RC Herman ...
... Notes on the State of Virginia NWL Letters of Noah Webster NWS Noah Webster Speller ON 00 Harriet E. Wilson , Our Nig , or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black Otto H. Olsen , ed . , The Thin Disguise P PF PH PL PP PR RC Herman ...
Page 6
... note by attributing his own and Mach's dislike of their mirror images to the possibility of " a vestigial trace of the archaic reaction which feels the ' double ' to be something uncanny " ( U , 248n ) . The note is perplexing both in ...
... note by attributing his own and Mach's dislike of their mirror images to the possibility of " a vestigial trace of the archaic reaction which feels the ' double ' to be something uncanny " ( U , 248n ) . The note is perplexing both in ...
Page 7
... note locates uncanniness — identified through discomfort — in the experience of an al- tered self that calls the ... notes , result in the reconceptualization of personhood broadly affect individuals ' experiences of self and make ...
... note locates uncanniness — identified through discomfort — in the experience of an al- tered self that calls the ... notes , result in the reconceptualization of personhood broadly affect individuals ' experiences of self and make ...
Page 22
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Contents
Neither Citizen nor Alien National Narratives Frederick Douglass and the Politics of SelfDefinition | 16 |
As From a Faithful Mirror Pierre Our Nig and Literary Nationalism | 108 |
The Strange Meaning of Being Black The Souls of Black Folk and the Narrative of History | 174 |
A LosingSelf Sense The Making of Americans and the Anxiety of Identity | 239 |
An American We | 301 |
Notes | 307 |
Selected Bibliography | 355 |
377 | |
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Constituting Americans: Cultural Anxiety and Narrative Form Priscilla Wald No preview available - 1994 |
Common terms and phrases
African Americans Ameri American Literature analysis anxiety articulated attention audience authorship become Bellmont Bois's Bondage calls Cambridge challenge chapter Cherokee Nation claim consciousness Constitution conventions cultural identity cultural narrative depiction descendants of Africans disruptions Dred Scott Duyckinck enslavement essay experience explains expression father Frado Frederick Douglass Freedom Gertrude Stein Glendinning Harriet Wilson Herman Melville Hersland human immigrant Indian inheritance Isabel Jefferson John kinship language liberty Library of America Lincoln Manifest Destiny marriage Melville Melville's metaphor mirror narrator national narrative natural Negro offers passage person personhood Pierre Pierre's political race racial reader Reconstruction references are designated rhetoric selfhood sense slave slavery social Souls of Black speech struggle Subsequent text references suggests symbol Taney tell threat tion turn uncanny Union United Veil W. E. B. Du Bois white Americans William James Wilson words writing York Young American