Black Atlas: Geography and Flow in Nineteenth-Century African American Literature - Softcover

Madera, Judith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822358115 ISBN 13: 9780822358114

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2015

Synopsis

Black Atlas presents definitive new approaches to black geography. It focuses attention on the dynamic relationship between place and African American literature during the long nineteenth century, a volatile epoch of national expansion that gave rise to the Civil War, Reconstruction, pan-Americanism, and the black novel. Judith Madera argues that spatial reconfiguration was a critical concern for the era's black writers, and she also demonstrates how the possibility for new modes of representation could be found in the radical redistricting of space. Madera reveals how crucial geography was to the genre-bending works of writers such as William Wells Brown, Martin Delany, James Beckwourth, Pauline Hopkins, Charles Chesnutt, and Alice Dunbar-Nelson. These authors intervened in major nineteenth-century debates about free soil, regional production, Indian deterritorialization, internal diasporas, pan–American expansionism, and hemispheric circuitry. Black geographies stood in for what was at stake in negotiating a shared world.
 

About this title

About the Author:

Judith Madera is Associate Professor of English and Environmental Studies at Wake Forest University.

Review:

"...an illuminating study of place and place-making."  (James S. Finley Transfers 2016-04-01)

"Simply put: Black Atlas flows. It is not narratively or conceptually simplistic—far from it ... Madera conducts readers through fluid valences of locale, terrain at once domestic, international, human, and economic." (Regis M. Fox Studies in the Novel 2016-09-01)

"Black Atlas provides a series of inspiring new approaches to earlier African American literature while demonstrating the diverse interpretive possibilities available through a geographically attuned literary criticism." (Martha Schoolman Journal of American History 2016-11-21)

"Making a compelling case for geography as flow (as well as geography and flow) in this examination of African American contributions to literature, Madera provides new insights into the complexities of 'place' that apply to any consideration of the relation between humans and their environments. Highly recommended." (S. Petersheim Choice 2016-01-01)

"Madera’s book illuminates numerous fascinating literary histories that would on their own make Black Atlas a treasure. But she does far more, which is to incisively theorize the relationship between the spatial imagination and literature. Her introduction is a stunning primer on key debates about geography that cuts across the fields of philosophy, literature, and cultural studies; it is essential reading for any literary scholar interested in place and space." (Mary Caton Lingold American Literature 2017-03-20)

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0822358115
• ISBN 13: 9780822358114
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 312