Transatlantic terrorism : British and American literature, 1859- 1991
- UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Taylor Roberts (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
- Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
- Advisor
- Anne Wallace
Abstract: Through a critical literary studies engagement with how terror is negotiated in literature from across periods and oceans, it becomes clear to me that a literary studies approach to expanding the historical and analytical dimensions of terrorism’s configurations throughout history would entail seeing how racial terror manifests in literary works. It becomes meaningful to investigate where terror and terrorism-- even if direct usage of this term is messy—materialize in transliterary and transatlantic contexts. This is type of literary studies approach to transatlantic connections is significant when looking at works of literature that chart the progression the from New World colonialism, then to plantation slavery, and to Jim Crow racial terror. In each terrain of terror and juncture of time access to freedom and the human are being negotiated, granted, or denied highlighting the perverse nature of liberal humanism in times of exploitation, expansion, and subjection. Proceeding from nineteenth-century white British authors to twentieth-century African American authors entails witnessing how the colonial and plantation terror regimes of bygone periods remain productive in modernized capacities. I begin by looking at the relationship between New World colonialism and the Salem witch trials in Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1859 novella “Lois the Witch,” as a way of situating terror not as emerging during the nineteenth-century, but of considering this Victorian author’s perspective on terrorism as a key feature of New World colonialism. From this reference point, I next look to Dion Boucicault’s 1859 play The Octoroon to address the Anglo-Irish playwright’s assessment of the politics of racialization, sexualization, commodification inherent to plantation terrorism. Boucicault’s play helps to establish a more concrete view of the interplay between race, gender, and finance that ground the plantation as an organized site of terror. I shift then to my analysis of two African American authors, James Baldwin and Bebe Moore Campbell, both of which draw creative inspiration from the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till in Mississippi. Baldwin’s 1964 play Blues for Mister Charlie is a meaningful work for exploring how extrajudicial forms of racial terror, like that of lynching, are mobilized and legitimized through state institutions like the church and courtroom. Moore’s 1991 novel Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine showcases post- emancipation racial terror as continuing the legacy of slavery through not only acts of overt physical violence like that of lynching, but through the fracturing of black families and exploiting labor for the advancement of a New Plantation. In this way, Transatlantic Terrorism traces the beginnings, pasts, and presents of terror. From Gaskell’s portrait of colonial terror to Boucicault’s dramatization of plantation terror, and lastly to Baldwin’s and Campbell’s articulations of post-emancipation racial terror, this project tracks the emergence and supposed end to a process of commercialized racialization. As Baldwin’s and Campbell’s works can attest to, slavery’s racial, gendered, sexual, and economic exploits remain operational in a time we don’t expect it to, which also remains grotesquely efficient in the present.
Transatlantic terrorism : British and American literature, 1859- 1991
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Created on 5/1/2024
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Dissertation
- Language: English
- Date: 2024
- Keywords
- African American Literature, Black Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Transatlantic Literary Studies, Victorian Literature
- Subjects
- Comparative literature $x American and English
- Comparative literature $x English and American
- Terror in literature
- Slavery in literature
- Racism in literature