Dissertation Section
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Unsung, Unwavering: Nineteenth-Century Black Women’s Epistemologies and the Liberal Problematic A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Regis Marlene Mann June 2013 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Erica Edwards, Chairperson Dr. Traise Yamamoto Dr. Vorris Nunley Copyright by Regis Marlene Mann 2013 The Dissertation of Regis Marlene Mann is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to acknowledge the encouragement, patience, insight, and generosity of each one of the colleagues, mentors, family members, and friends, who have supported me throughout this journey, with abundant praise and thanksgiving to the One who sustains us all. iv For Jeanne Thanks. For everything. v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Unsung, Unwavering: Nineteenth-Century Black Women’s Epistemologies and the Liberal Problematic by Regis Marlene Mann Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in English University of California, Riverside, June 2013 Dr. Erica Edwards, Chairperson Unsung, Unwavering deploys African-Americanist and feminist literary criticism in order to problematize how scholars have read nineteenth-century African-American women’s activism and knowledge production. It simultaneously expands contemporary critical inquiry in two key ways: that is, I analyze nineteenth-century black women’s interrogation of the effects of liberalism as juridical, economic, and affective performance; and I unsettle sedimented perspectives of black resistance as inherently militant, male, and vernacular. The first three chapters, in particular, address the ways in which Harriet Wilson, Elizabeth Keckly, and Anna Julia Cooper undermine fundamental liberal and Enlightenment precepts including reason, individualism, and the privileging of a transcendental Subject.
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