Utopian Whiteness, Black Resistance, and the National Imaginary in Nineteenth-Century America

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports 2016 Spectacular Struggles: Utopian Whiteness, Black Resistance, and the National Imaginary in Nineteenth-Century America Courtney L. Novosat Follow this and additional works at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd Recommended Citation Novosat, Courtney L., "Spectacular Struggles: Utopian Whiteness, Black Resistance, and the National Imaginary in Nineteenth-Century America" (2016). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 6331. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/6331 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by the The Research Repository @ WVU with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Dissertation in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you must obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Dissertation has been accepted for inclusion in WVU Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports collection by an authorized administrator of The Research Repository @ WVU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Spectacular Struggles: Utopian Whiteness, Black Resistance, and the National Imaginary in Nineteenth-Century America Courtney L. Novosat Dissertation submitted to the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Tim Sweet, Ph.D., Chair John Ernest, Ph.D. Gwen Bergner, Ph.D. Michael Germana, Ph.D. Paul Gilmore, Ph.D. Department of English Morgantown, West Virginia 2016 Keywords: American Literature, African American Literature; Nineteenth Century; Utopia; World’s Fairs; Critical Race Theory Copyright 2016 Courtney L. Novosat ABSTRACT Spectacular Struggles: Utopian Whiteness, Black Resistance, and the National Imaginary in Nineteenth-Century America Courtney L. Novosat Through an analysis of the popularity, didacticism, and rhetoric of literary utopias and world’s fairs, Spectacular Struggles argues that during the latter half of the nineteenth century our national narrative makes use of an inherently and uncritically white utopian form to forge an exclusionary, white national identity as an anxious response to a tumultuous era of social change. The first chapter traces the origins of this “white (male) utopian complex” from More’s sui generis Utopia to the white utopian frameworks governing our self-representation at the fair, national narratives, and even our histories. From this grounding, I turn to Edgar Allen Poe’s quirky, yet poignant “Mellonta Tauta” (1850) and Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance (1852), before focusing on Edward Bellamy’s oft-centralized Looking Backward (1889). Through this comparison, I map the rise of the white male utopian complex within our historiography in contrast to a paralleled and metacritical utopian voice excluded from this historiography. To further highlight the canon’s white utopian complex, chapter two turns to America’s premier, most nationalistic, and most overtly-racialized fairscape, the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893). While chapter one looks to the way in which the Philadelphia’s Centennial International Exhibition (1876) informs Bellamy’s architectural imagining of the future and helps to establish the fairscape’s relationship to the literary utopia, chapter two looks at the role the Columbian Exposition plays in institutionalizing and nationalizing a neoclassical white aesthetic not merely for architecture or art or literature, but for national identity. I focus here on the fair’s “White City” as a racialized articulation of the “City Beautiful” movement in literature, architecture, and ultimately urban planning. I argue that the salience of the “race question” at these spectacular nationalized utopias highlights utopian scholarship’s avoidance of race history and how such an omission skews the historiography of the period. With an eye toward recasting race history as central to this historiography, chapters three and four take up two under-discussed bodies of utopian literature: the Southern utopia and the African America utopia. Chapter three argues that we’ve long overlooked utopias set in the South or written by Southerners precisely because they, like the fairs held therein, aggressively and openly reassert whites’ proprietary claims over the South’s history and its future. These oft-excluded white supremacist utopias not only advance a more militant Anglo-Saxon national identity, but they inform a Southern fairscape that sentimentally rewrites the Old South by forcibly whitewashing the New. In contrast to the previous chapter’s focus on white supremacist works, chapter four argues that a nascent black nationalism begins to emerge in black spectacular fictions that appear at the century’s end and that these fictions collectively reclaim an American past, present, and future in which black Americans play an integral role. I argue that these black utopists use the hybridity of the utopian form to articulate a black philosophy, history, and critical study of whiteness that simultaneously exposes how the inherent whiteness of the utopian form has long-advanced within the national imaginary an American utopia contingent upon its whiteness. Spectacular Struggles offers a starting point for recovering a previously-evaded race history and significant body of utopian works long pushed to the margins of the contemporary canon. It offers a starting point for acknowledging how the racially-unmarked historiography presently defining the scope of utopian study distorts a nineteenth-century reality. iii Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the encouragement and support of many people. Foremost, I would like to thank my dissertation director, John Ernest, for generously sharing his time and wisdom as both a professor and mentor. While the breadth of his knowledge of racial history in the U.S. and of nineteenth-century American literature have been an inspiration, his sound, practical counsel in academic matters both large and small has been invaluable to me in negotiating this project and the discipline in general. This project would be a shadow of itself without John’s direction and, quite simply, I would not be the same person without his guidance. I would also like to heartily thank Tim Sweet, whose expansive historical knowledge is rivaled only by his sincere dedication to his students’ development. I am greatly indebted to the care he has taken to offer me thoughtful, complex, and challenging feedback both as a professor and as a primary reader of this dissertation. His insights have helped me to become a more nuanced thinker and a better scholar. I also owe a great deal of thanks to Gwen Bergner, who has meticulously read my work with keen attention to helping me refine both the structure of my argument and the precision of my writing. I am tremendously grateful for her clear, concrete advice for revision, which has helped me to tighten my argument and strengthen my writing. I would also like to thank Michael Germana, who directed me to helpful primary and secondary sources as I began this project and who has offered me invaluable written feedback on my final draft. I am also grateful to Paul Gilmore of the California State University at Long Beach for graciously agreeing to serve on my committee and for his own work in The Genuine Article (2001), which first demonstrated to me the importance of considering the relationship between nineteenth-century literature and cultures of exhibition. I would also like to express my gratitude to my peers at WVU, particularly to Cara Snider, Andrea Bebell, Douglas Terry, and Jason Stupp. They not only extended their friendship, but shared their intellect. During our years of course work, they challenged and advanced my thinking in the most productive ways. I would be remiss if I did not also thank professors Magali Michael, Linda Kinnahan, Frederick Newberry, Dan Watkins, and the late Albert Labriola for guiding my study of literature as an undergraduate and master’s student at Duquesne University. And I also owe a debt of gratitude to my peers at Duquesne, particularly to Claire Barbetti and Lee Ann Glowzenski. For more than a decade, Claire has been both a touchstone and an inspiration while Lee Ann has been an ardent ally and beacon in my times of doubt. I am honored to call these brilliant women my friends. Finally, I would like to thank my family. None of this work would have been possible without their support. My parents, Debra and George Novosat, have been steadfast in their commitment to my education at all levels. For the last five years of this project they have driven countless miles and across state lines to be second parents to my son, so that I could write. My gratitude and love for them is simply immeasurable. My husband, Damon Clark, has been my greatest advocate and fervent ally for more than fifteen years. He has been my sounding board. He has been my calm. He has been the most selfless, loving, and devoted partner and father one could hope to find. And, lastly, I am grateful to my son, Liam, whose growth alongside this work has given me a greater sense of its purpose. I dedicate this work to him with the hope that he might always strive to realize a better world. iv Table of Contents 1 Introduction:

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