UPDATE: Assimilation & Subversion in Early American Lit (9/20/04; NEMLA, 3/31/05-4/2/05)

Deadline Extended:

Examinations of early "American" texts that both reinscribe and resist =
the
status quo. How do non-dominant subjects such as slaves, Native =
Americans,
and women writers characterize their acceptance of oppression and how to =
do
they refigure and resist that oppression in their "assimilationist" =
writing?

"Remember, Christians," Phillis Wheatley writes in her most famous poem,
"Negroes, black as Cain,/ May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train" =
(7-8).
As William Keach and others have argued, there is a diction of economics =
at
work here in the metaphor which compares blacks to sugar cane before it =
has
been refined into white sugar. This metaphor links the slave trade not =
only
to a violent colonial project of assimilation, but also to the =
capitalist
market which commodifies the "Negro" body, and increases its value =
through a
process of production. Buried in the religious metaphor of happy =
conversion
that runs throughout the poem, Wheatley hides a critique of the =
situation
which she herself is in. This panel will examine this double-ness, =
through
which non-dominant subjects both reinscribe and resist their own =
oppression.
This doubled voice appears not only in Wheatley, but in Equiano, =
Rowlandson,
Bradstreet, Sarah Edwards, and many other early American writers who =
found
themselves struggling to define both their places in the emerging nation =
and
their own authorial voices. This panel will consider such texts, =
exploring
how assimilation and revolution coexist and influence each other.

Both "early" and "American" are terms that will be defined broadly for =
the
purposes of this panel. The Chair also encourages proposals which =
interpret
this topic in unexpected ways.

DEADLINE EXTENDED: Abstracts via email by 9/20/04 to Dr. Robin DeRosa at
rderosa_at_plymouth.edu.

This panel will be part of the 2005 NEMLA Convention in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, March 31-April 2. Panelists must be members of NEMLA or =
join
by mid-November 2004.

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Received on Wed Sep 08 2004 - 16:46:54 EDT