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UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Matters of Life: Writing Lives in the Age of United States Slavery Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7rg776h9 Author Beck, Benjamin S Publication Date 2019 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Matters of Life: Writing Lives in the Age of United States Slavery A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in English by Benjamin Shearer Beck 2019 © Copyright by Benjamin Shearer Beck 2019 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Matters of Life: Writing Lives in the Age of United States Slavery by Benjamin Shearer Beck Doctor of English University of California, Los Angeles 2019 Professor Christopher J. Looby, Chair What is black life-writing beyond the canon of the slave narrative? Matters of Life: Writing Lives in the Age of United States Slavery shows that on the margins of the slave narrative exists a plenitude of forms, practices, and concepts that invite reconsideration of the premises that continue to structure understandings of the field of life-writing in the age of slavery. These premises include, but are not limited to, the following claims: that emulative lives begin in enslavement and end in freedom, that sophisticated narrative is the domain of autobiography, that authenticity and truth are the goals of life-writing. Matters of Life explores how biographical novellas, collective biographies, and scrapbooks offer alternative accounts about the possible life stories and forms that such stories take during the age of slavery in the United States. ii The dissertation of Benjamin Shearer Beck is approved. Michael C. Cohen Christopher Hunter Carrie Leah Hyde Richard A. Yarborough Christopher J. Looby, Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2019 iii With gratitude for my family and my teachers iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vi VITA viii INTRODUCTION 1 Beyond the Canon of the Slave Narrative CHAPTER ONE 14 “There are some Madison Washingtons in this country”: The Heroic Slave and the Diffusion of Character CHAPTER TWO 63 Compiling the Multitude in Civil-War Era Collective Biographies CHAPTER THREE 108 Sojourner Truth and the Matter of Life CODA 155 “This question is still to be settled”: Du Bois’s John Brown and the Challenges of Biography WORKS CITED 169 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I recognize the following institutions for their financial support that helped me complete this dissertation: the English Department at UCLA, the Graduate Division at UCLA, and the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan where I spent time as a Bordin/Gillette Fellow. It gives me great joy and a sense of humility to recognize my dissertation committee. I am honored to add my name to the long list of students whose lives are richer for Chris Looby’s guidance. From my first days on campus, Chris has offered encouragement, support, curiosity, and intellectual generosity. Michael Cohen embraces my tendency to be excited about the bark but encourages me to see not only the tree but the forest. I am grateful for his fierce advocacy on behalf of his students. Chris Hunter has shared his enthusiasm, good cheer, and vast knowledge of bibliography and genre history at crucial moments. Richard Yarborough’s counsel helped me at crucial writing junctures, most notably when I sat in his office before embarking on the first draft of my first chapter. Carrie Hyde’s mentorship is imprinted all over this project, at the conceptual level and at the sentence level. From helping me set deadlines and keeping them, to reminding me to take a break to celebrate milestones along the way, I am thankful for Carrie’s role in every stage of this project. Jordan Stein introduced me to the promises and challenges of book history and shepherded me from the very inception of my career as an Americanist. I am grateful for his courage and graciousness. UCLA offers an astounding array of intellectual vitality. Allison Carruth, Helen Deutsch, Michael North, and Mark Seltzer shared their expertise, rigor, and enthusiasm at important stages in my career. A heartfelt chapeau to Chris Mott for his mentorship and pedagogical advice. The Americanist Research Colloquium introduced me to the best of scholarly collegiality, particularly Bert Emerson and Joe Dimuro. I thank the attendees from when I presented work on Sojourner Truth, especially Michele Navakas. My graduate peers have made coursework, teaching, and campus life enjoyable and rewarding: Craig Messner, Greg Toy, Kim Calder, Jen MacGregor, Crescent Rainwater, Kiel Shaub, Jonathan Kincade, Alexandra Verini, Ellen Truxaw, Kirsten Lew, Rebecca Hill, Kathryn Cai, Efren Lopez, Vanessa Febo, Lindsay Wilhelm, Alex Zobel, and Christian Reed. Angelina Del Balzo, Jay Jin, Grant Rosson, Alexandra Verini, Will Clark, and Sujin Youn made our dissertation writing group a supportive and sustaining place where deadlines mattered. Dan Couch, Sarah Nance, Jay Jin, Jordan Wingate, Grant Rosson, Will Clark, Angelina Del Balzo, and Sam Sommers deserve more than I can express for their friendship. From beers to dumplings, coffee and bike rides, in California to Colorado, New Mexico to New York, these friends sustain life. vi Alex Corey has read every word of this project, often with little notice and always with a keen eye. They are patient and supportive when necessary, exasperated and demanding when necessary. Will Connell, Allison Wilcox, Oliver Parini, Elsie Parini, Spencer Fetrow, and Devon Tomasulo welcomed me into their lives generously and compassionately. I thank Oliver Aguirre for his warm encouragement and curiosity: Audere est Facere. Cam Nevin helped me navigate a critical juncture, literally and figuratively. I owe special thanks to Hal McFerren who helped me see that I was capable of more. I thank my parents Steve and Jenny Beck, who dutifully checked in, offering constant support. Andy Beck and Emma Kronman celebrate my milestones, and I appreciate their interest in my work. I thank DeAnne Shearer and Andy Shearer for their encouragement and love. Jim, Tori, and Courtney Dillon have selflessly helped during many different stages. I am indebted to the memory and love of Rick Shearer. For Kaitlyn, Simon, and Lois, everything. vii VITA EDUCATION 2016 C.Phil., English. University of California, Los Angeles. 2011 M.A., English. University of Colorado, Boulder. 2007 B.A., cum laude, English. University of Vermont. 2005-2006 Visiting Student. St. Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, UK. HONORS AND AWARDS 2018 Distinguished Teaching Assistant nominee, UCLA 2017-18 English Departmental Dissertation Year Fellowship, UCLA 2016 Bordin-Gillette Fellowship, University of Michigan 2015 Mellon Pedagogy Fellowship, UCLA 2014-15 Graduate Research Mentorship (with Christopher Looby), UCLA 2014 Graduate Summer Research Mentorship (with Blake Allmendinger), UCLA 2013 Graduate Summer Research Mentorship (with Michael Cohen), UCLA 2011 Department of English Graduate Student Research Grant, Univ. Colorado 2007 John Dewey Honors Program, Univ. Vermont Willard Pope Prize, Univ. Vermont Phi Beta Kappa, Univ. Vermont SELECTED PRESENTATIONS 2018 “Models of Resistance in Lydia Maria Child’s The Freedmen’s Book,” Society for the Study of American Women Writers Triennial Conference, Denver, CO. November. 2018 Organizer and Presenter, “Reappraising Regionalisms and the American West: A Roundtable,” C19: Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists Fifth Biennial Conference, Albuquerque, NM. March. 2018 Organizer, Presider, and Presenter, “Biography, Race, and Nineteenth- Century American Culture: Challenges, Methods, Goals,” MLA Annual Convention, New York City, NY. January. 2016 “Lydia Maria Child’s The Freedmen’s Book, Biography, and Pedagogy,” American Literature Association Annual Conference. San Francisco, CA. May. 2014 “How Amateurs Make the West: The Printscapes of E Clampus Vitus,” American Studies Association Annual Conference. Also panel co- organizer, “Fun in Public: The Cultures of Amateur Labor,” Los Angeles, CA. November. 2013 “David Walker’s Appeal and the Printers of Everyday Abolition,” MLA Annual Conference, Boston, MA. January. 2012 Chairperson for “Prospects for African American Print Culture” C19: Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists Second Biennial Conference, Berkeley, CA. April. viii INTRODUCTION BEYOND THE CANON OF THE SLAVE NARRATIVE “The blacks still wait a biographer,” writes reformer James Handasyd Perkins for The National Era in 1849. “Had the skin of Toussaint L’Ouverture been white,” Perkins continues, “he would have found a ‘Marshall’ long since, able and delighted to portray his acts” (121).1 Referring to Chief Justice John Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court and author of an important nineteenth-century biography of George Washington,2 Perkins laments that black life-writing has not found a Marshall. There have been L’Ouvertures, Perkins points out, but without a “Marshall” who can rise to the challenge of writing a suitable biography, many such lives remain unwritten. Perkins is correct that there is no corresponding Marshall for L’Ouverture in 1849 despite his stated desire. However, Perkins never envisions that life-writing could take a form other than a monumental biography or that it might be written by someone other than a monumental author. Like Perkins, many have understood biography to have the following characteristics: it features a single subject; it has a single author; as a material form it is a bound book, sometimes in multiple volumes that testify to the subject’s grand achievements and place in history. With these assumptions about what counts as a biography, Perkins would have 1 J.H.P. is James Handasyd Perkins (1810-1849). Perkins was born in Boston and then emigrated west to Ohio where he served as a newspaper editor, author, and reformer, among other vocations. For an overview of Perkins, see Goss 587-90. 2 According to Scott E. Casper, Marshall’s biography was both a landmark publishing event and commercial failure. Marshall’s Life of Washington, particularly its fifth and final volume, was a lightning rod for partisanship.
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