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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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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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