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Events
Jun. 30 | 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies due
Jun. 30 | 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies Teaching, Advising, and Program Development due
Oct. 1 | Travel Grants for Graduate Students
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Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
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Chieffo-Reidway, Toby. "Nathaniel Jocelyn: In the Service of Art and Abolition," History, College of William and Mary, August 2005.
My dissertation is a biographical, cultural and historical study of artist and abolitionist Nathaniel Jocelyn (1796-1881), a nineteenth-century portrait painter and engraver in New Haven, Connecticut. Although Jocelyn received little formal training, he sought to become a preeminent portrait painter. Jocelyn lived in an age of evangelical revivalism commonly called the Second Great Awakening. He was a devout Congregationalist and saw his life embedded in his religious convictions. Jocelyn’s diary chronicles his beliefs, social views, daily struggles, and plans to attain artistic acclaim and economic success. My dissertation reveals an artist not unlike other enterprising men of the New Republic. Yet Jocelyn was extraordinary because he created the most important portrait of an African in the nineteenth-century, Cinqué (c.1813-1879), leader of the Amistad rebellion of 1839. This portrait challenged Jacksonian-era concepts of portraiture and became one of the most significant icons for the abolitionist movement. For Jocelyn the portrayal of Cinqué was the galvanizing event of his life as an artist, abolitionist, and Christian. Jocelyn not only challenged the concept of conventional portraiture, but also nineteenth-century racial stereotypes by depicting a black man as a man of dignity. Jocelyn used Cinqué‘s portrait to dissociate black skin and African-ness from traditional depictions of black men that linked them with slavery. Jocelyn was not afraid to show an African as a man of power, independence, and intelligence—traits portraitists generally associated with white people. His depiction of Cinqué as an idealized hero was intentional, and it aided the abolitionist cause. Nathaniel Jocelyn created a visual abolitionist language in his portrayal of Cinqué by crossing the boundaries of race and imbuing the portrait with an iconography rich with abolitionist and Christian symbolism. Jocelyn led a multifaceted life as a Christian, abolitionist, portrait painter, inventor, engraver, and esteemed teacher.
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