Resonant Texts: the Politics of Nineteenth-Century African American Music and Print Culture

City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2018 Resonant Texts: The Politics of Nineteenth-Century African American Music and Print Culture Paul Fess The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2955 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Resonant Texts: The Politics of Nineteenth-Century African American Music and Print Culture Paul Fess A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2018 © 2018 Paul Fess All Rights Reserved ii Resonant Texts: The Politics of Nineteenth-Century African American Music and Print Culture by Paul Fess This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in English in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ______________________________ __________________________ Date David Reynolds Chair of Examining Committee ______________________________ __________________________ Date Eric Lott Executive Officer Supervisory Committee David Reynolds Eric Lott Robert Reid-Pharr The City University of New York iii Abstract Resonant Texts: The Politics of Nineteenth-Century African American Music and Print Culture Paul Fess Advisor: David Reynolds Resonant Texts: the Politics of Nineteenth-Century African American Music and Print Culture, investigates musical sound as a discursive tool African American writers and activists deployed to contest enslavement before the Civil War and claim citizenship after Emancipation. Traditionally, scholars have debated the degree to which nineteenth-century African American music constituted evidence of black culture and marked a persistent African orality that still abides within African American textual production. While these trends inform this project, my inquiry focuses on the ways that writers placed elements of musical sound—such as rhythm, melody, choral singing, and harmony—at the center of their texts in order to shape public conversations about race. I focus on three literary genres fundamental to nineteenth-century rhetoric about race: slave narratives, sentimental fiction, and song collections. I approach these texts by turning to recent work in the interdisciplinary field of sound studies, and I examine how representations of musical sound structured these writers’ confrontations with injustice. The result is an understanding of how representations of music within this literature helped establish concepts of subjectivity, personhood, and community for enslaved and ex-enslaved figures. Contrary to accounts that circumscribed nineteenth-century African American music and literature within humanist, ethnographic, and sentimentalist discourses, I argue that the musical sound represented within these texts sought to expose dominant power structures and convey methods of resistance. Rather than merely operating at the level of reportage, representations of iv music served as modes by which to think through enslavement and racial injustice. In my analysis of Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave, for example, I show how representations of rhythm and musical virtuosity signaled a turn away from previous generations of slave narratives that emphasized the self-liberating abilities of exemplary individuals; instead, through his representations of music, Northup comes to a more systematic understanding of enslavement that accounts for how antebellum U.S. culture marked enslaved persons simultaneously as subjects and objects. In another section of the project, I compare the appearance of hymns, spirituals, and parodies of minstrel songs in Martin Delany’s Blake; or, the Huts of America with the songs recorded in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Dred; or the Great Dismal Swamp to show instabilities within the rhetoric of antislavery sentimentalism, and in my discussion of the song collection Slave Songs of the United States I show how musical notation practices and recording and collecting processes structured negotiations of race after the Civil War. v Acknowledgements Tucked away in lightly trafficked corners of libraries, coffee shops, and bars you can easily forget the outpouring of support and generosity that brought you to the project that you are pecking away at in solitude. As I write this, the last document of my PhD dissertation, the names of all of the friends, colleagues, advisors, and heroes that helped along the way comes rushing back. The Graduate Center itself has proven to be an invaluable pool of material and metaphysical resources for my intellectual growth and the development of this project, and I would like to thank all of those at the front of the house and behind the scenes who make the place run. Members of the faculty of the English Program have been charitable with their time and encouraging in their comments on my ideas about nineteenth-century American culture. First and foremost I would like to thank my committee. David S. Reynolds pushed me along and kept me focused. His were the kinds of insights that at turns reminded me about comma splices and opened up new avenues for thinking about 1850s America. In addition to constituting a walking textbook in matters sartorial, Eric Lott helped me see new connections between the literature I was exploring and the theoretical frame offered by Sound Studies. In reading his work, I gained a new sense of what the English sentence can do, and in our meetings, he generously gave me space to float, and then talk myself out of, some crazy ideas. Robert Reid-Pharr was the committee member who suggested that I pair my reading in African American literature with the work of Sound Studies theorists, a simple suggestion that continues to reverberate through my thinking about nineteenth-century literature. Additionally, his pedagogical practice remains an example I turn to again and again. I would also like to thank David Greetham, who served on my Oral Examination committee and put me on a path to exploring connections between Media vi Studies and Book History. When I began writing I would have been at sea without the aid of dissertation workshops run by Joan Richardson and Duncan Faherty, both of whom created a generative spaces for reading and critiquing other people’s work. Hildegard Hoeller served as my faculty mentor at the beginning of my time at the Graduate Center, and without her help I would have spent that first year totally lost. Finally, my thanks to Jerry Watts, who was an unofficial advisor before his death. He was one of the most generous people I encountered at the Graduate Center, and his spur of the moment counseling sessions helped me understand much of the labyrinthine world of academe. I would not have been able to complete this project without the help of several fellowships and institutes. First at the GC, I would like to thank Louise Lennihan, who as Associate Provost arranged travel awards for me and many other GC students. At Rutgers University, I had the good fortune to attend one of Richard Miller’s immersive digital writing workshops, which laid the foundation for my pedagogy as well as tuned me into the possibilities of digital humanities. I was also able to participate in two programs at the American Antiquarian Society: the “Digital Antiquarian” conference and workshop and the Jay and Deborah Last fellowship for archival research. Paul Erickson and Molly Hardy facilitated my participation in these programs, and I thank them both for helping me learn the ropes of archival research. In the penultimate year of writing the dissertation I was awarded a predoctoral fellowship at the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American studies at the University of Rochester where I was given the time to write in an enriching environment around interesting and curious people. I thank the program director Cilas Kemedjio and the coordinator Ghislaine Radegonde-Eison for all of their support. I also thank all of the senior scholars at Rochester who helped me navigate vii the writing process and the job search: Bette London, Tom Hahn, Jeff Tucker, John Michael, and Sharon Willis. Along the way there were many friends who took the time to read my work, hear my ideas, and, when the time came, buy me a drink. Thanks to Justin Van Wormer, Josh Schneiderman, Blevin Shelnutt, Jim Casey, and Rob Koehler Finally, I would like to thank my family, without whose support I would not have been able to finish this project. Thanks to my parents, Paula and Randall Peters for asking just often enough the question dreaded by every writer: “when do you think you’ll be finished?” And, for moving me, my wife, and my child up and down the eastern seaboard every year. I am also thankful for the ways that my wife’s family has supported me. Thanks to John Michael and Sharon Willis for acting as counselors and coaches as Krysia and I navigate this carnivalesque world of academia. Your insights have been indispensible. I am also grateful to have such a thoughtful mother-in-law in Ewa Hauser, who traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to help out when our tiny stranger arrived and it looked like writing time was evaporating. Thanks to Marta and Chris Carpenter for supporting us in countless ways. Don’t worry guys; one day we’ll take you up on that airbed offer. I am greatly indebted to the New Orleans folks for housing and hanging out with me. Our time together provided me with much needed respite from the grind. Thanks to Patrick and Mary Grace for letting me crash at your place, sometimes unannounced, sometimes for indefinite periods, sometimes with multiple animals in tow, sometimes with onerous storage needs.

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