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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
For submission guidelines, click here
Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
By University | By Year
Steadman, Jennifer Bernhardt. "Travel Writing and Resistance: Travel Narratives by African American and Euro-American Women, 1820-1860," Emory University, May 2000.
Travel Narratives written by Euro-American and African American women during the early nineteenth century challenge widely held notions about who was writing and traveling during this period. Closely reading travel writing written for publication as well as letters and diaries, this project expands current understandings of the travel genre by including non-elite women and considering the social protest evident in marginalized women’s texts. Unlike the stereotype of the Victorian matron traveling in luxury, these women travel without male guardians or economic resources. Working middle-class women traveled in search of new markets for their skills and wider job opportunities than they found at home. Daring to be unfeminine, some women travelers encountered social and physical danger on their journeys. Scenes of physical danger focus attention on the traveler’s female bodies and their trespass into the masculine arena of travel and adventure. Violating tenets of femininity that would confine them to home and family, they faced reprisal for their transgressive behavior. The stakes were high, but women travelers undertook the risks in order to gain economic security , to practice racial uplift, and to contest unjust political and social practices. Contrasting the utopian possibility of the places they visit with the disappointing reality of American society, these authors reinforce their censure of race, class, and gender inequities back home in the northeastern United States.
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