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Events
Mar. 1 | 2012 Franklin Prize
Nominations for 2012 John Hope Franklin Publication Prize for the best-published book in American Studies due
Mar. 1 | 2012 Romero Prize
Nominations for 2012 Lora Romero Publication Prize for the best-published first book in American Studies due
Mar. 1 | Community Partnership Grants
Applications for the 2012 Community Partnership Grants Program to assist American Studies collaborative, interdisciplinary community projects due
Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
By University | By Year
Ryan, Susan M. "The Grammar of Good Intentions: Benevolence and Racial Identity in Antebellum American Literature," Department of English, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, April 1999.
My project reconstructs a multivalent conversation on interracial benevolence in the antebellum United States. Americans’ preoccupation with doing good informed their writings in myriad ways, resulting in both idealized portrayals of benevolent acts and blistering critiques of charity-as-practiced. Using the tools of critical race theory, I argue that these representations—even when not ostensibly about race—betray the interconnections between racial hierarchies and relations of benevolence. Their cautionary tales and their very language are intimately connected to the era’s emerging racial identities and conflicts over slavery, immigration, and Indian removal. As I analyze the mutually constituting rhetorics of race and benevolence, I put works by Melville, Stowe, Douglass, and Emerson (back) into dialogue with a variety of cultural materials, including charity society reports, African American newspapers, lithographs, juvenile fiction, sermons, and tract literature.
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