This episode features a conversation between Alex Alston, Assistant Professor of Literatures in English at Bryn Mawr College, and Maurice O. Wallace, Professor of English at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, revolving primarily around the presence of nonhuman animals in nineteenth-century Antebellum slave narratives and related literature. The discussants explore the evolution of Frederick Douglass’s rhetoric and thinking around nonhuman animal life throughout his career as an editor, activist, and intellectual. They focus on The Heroic Slave, Douglass’s fictional account of a historical revolt aboard the Creole, wherein the fictional protagonist, Madison Washington, is inspired by birds and a snake to escape bondage. From Douglass’s oeuvre Alston and Wallace think out toward how the narratives of other enslaved persons and Black authors of the 19th century contemplated the condition of nonhuman animals alongside their own in a range of asymmetrical and conflicting ways. Other narratives discussed include those of Mary Prince, Moses Roper, Henry Bibb, and Jacob D. Green. The conversation also delves into relevant and recent criticism on questions of race, gender, species, etc. in 19th century texts. Post-production support by Jess Van Gilder (Georgia Tech). Transcript and bibliography available at https://bit.ly/S09E05Transcript
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This episode features a conversation between Alex Alston, Assistant Professor of Literatures in English at Bryn Mawr College, and Maurice O. Wallace, Professor of English at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, revolving primarily around the presence of nonhuman animals in nineteenth-century Antebellum slave narratives and related literature. The discussants explore the evolution of Frederick Douglass’s rhetoric and thinking around nonhuman animal life throughout his career as an editor, activist, and intellectual. They focus on The Heroic Slave, Douglass’s fictional account of a historical revolt aboard the Creole, wherein the fictional protagonist, Madison Washington, is inspired by birds and a snake to escape bondage. From Douglass’s oeuvre Alston and Wallace think out toward how the narratives of other enslaved persons and Black authors of the 19th century contemplated the condition of nonhuman animals alongside their own in a range of asymmetrical and conflicting ways. Other narratives discussed include those of Mary Prince, Moses Roper, Henry Bibb, and Jacob D. Green. The conversation also delves into relevant and recent criticism on questions of race, gender, species, etc. in 19th century texts. Post-production support by Jess Van Gilder (Georgia Tech). Transcript and bibliography available at https://bit.ly/S09E05Transcript
S08 E01 | Undomesticated: Nonhuman Animals and Queer Resistance in Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
C19: America in the 19th Century
37 minutes 47 seconds
1 year ago
S08 E01 | Undomesticated: Nonhuman Animals and Queer Resistance in Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
Generally associated with postbellum regionalism, mutinous heroines feigning New England propriety, and consumable literature for the urban elites, recent re-readings of Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman’s fiction have uncovered its nuanced, surreptitious, and explosive quality. Much of this disquiet is concentrated in the bodies of barely domesticated animals. Contributors to this episode – Elena Furlanetto (host, University of Duisburg-Essen), Cécile Roudeau (Université Paris Cité), Emma Thiébaut (Université Paris Cité), and Emily Coccia (Carleton College) – propose to take a deeper look at parrots, cats, dogs, squirrels, and monkeys in Understudies (1901), a collection of short stories about New England’s nonhuman nature, and other works by the same author. In Wilkins Freeman’s animals, anthropomorphic and sentimentalist guidelines for animal representation which inform much 19th-century animal fiction burst at the seams to reveal creatures of ambiguity who disturb the quiet of New England living rooms, demonstrate the potential of cages not quite shut, and tread the unstable borders between garden and wilderness. The voices in this podcast follow Stephanie Palmer’s encouragement to “listen to the ambivalences” of Wilkins Freeman’s fiction and treat animals as a productive site of confluence for different foci: from animal studies to queer and feminist ecologies, Indigenous studies, and ambiguity studies among others. Shownotes: https://bit.ly/S08E01_Shownotes Transcript Available at https://bit.ly/S08E01Transcript
C19: America in the 19th Century
This episode features a conversation between Alex Alston, Assistant Professor of Literatures in English at Bryn Mawr College, and Maurice O. Wallace, Professor of English at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, revolving primarily around the presence of nonhuman animals in nineteenth-century Antebellum slave narratives and related literature. The discussants explore the evolution of Frederick Douglass’s rhetoric and thinking around nonhuman animal life throughout his career as an editor, activist, and intellectual. They focus on The Heroic Slave, Douglass’s fictional account of a historical revolt aboard the Creole, wherein the fictional protagonist, Madison Washington, is inspired by birds and a snake to escape bondage. From Douglass’s oeuvre Alston and Wallace think out toward how the narratives of other enslaved persons and Black authors of the 19th century contemplated the condition of nonhuman animals alongside their own in a range of asymmetrical and conflicting ways. Other narratives discussed include those of Mary Prince, Moses Roper, Henry Bibb, and Jacob D. Green. The conversation also delves into relevant and recent criticism on questions of race, gender, species, etc. in 19th century texts. Post-production support by Jess Van Gilder (Georgia Tech). Transcript and bibliography available at https://bit.ly/S09E05Transcript
