Black Women’s Intellectual Traditions
Speaking Their Minds
New edition
9781684581412
9781684581429
Distributed for Brandeis University Press
Black Women’s Intellectual Traditions
Speaking Their Minds
New edition
A new edition of a landmark work on Black women’s intellectual traditions.
An astonishing wealth of literary and intellectual work by nineteenth-century Black women is being rediscovered and restored to print in scholarly and popular editions. In Kristin Waters’s and Carol B. Conaway’s landmark edited collection, Black Women’s Intellectual Traditions: Speaking Their Minds, sophisticated commentary on this rich body of work chronicles a powerful and interwoven legacy of activism based in social and political theories that helped shape the history of North America. The book meticulously reclaims this American legacy, providing a collection of critical analyses of the primary sources and their vital traditions. Written by leading scholars, Black Women’s Intellectual Traditions is particularly powerful in its exploration of the pioneering thought and action of the nineteenth-century Black woman lecturer and essayist Maria W. Stewart, abolitionist Sojourner Truth, novelist and poet Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, educator Anna Julia Cooper, newspaper editor Mary Ann Shadd Cary, and activist Ida B. Wells. The distinguished contributors are Hazel V. Carby, Patricia Hill Collins, Karen Baker-Fletcher, Kristin Waters, R. Dianne Bartlow, Carol B. Conaway, Olga Idriss Davis, Vanessa Holford Diana, Evelyn Simien, Janice W. Fernheimer, Michelle N. Garfield, Joy James, Valerie Palmer-Mehta, Carla L. Peterson, Marilyn Richardson, Evelyn M. Simien, Ebony A. Utley, Mary Helen Washington, Melina Abdullah, and Lena Ampadu. The volume will interest scholars and readers of African-American and women’s studies, history, rhetoric, literature, poetry, sociology, political science, and philosophy. This updated edition features a new preface by the editors in the light of new developments in current scholarship.
An astonishing wealth of literary and intellectual work by nineteenth-century Black women is being rediscovered and restored to print in scholarly and popular editions. In Kristin Waters’s and Carol B. Conaway’s landmark edited collection, Black Women’s Intellectual Traditions: Speaking Their Minds, sophisticated commentary on this rich body of work chronicles a powerful and interwoven legacy of activism based in social and political theories that helped shape the history of North America. The book meticulously reclaims this American legacy, providing a collection of critical analyses of the primary sources and their vital traditions. Written by leading scholars, Black Women’s Intellectual Traditions is particularly powerful in its exploration of the pioneering thought and action of the nineteenth-century Black woman lecturer and essayist Maria W. Stewart, abolitionist Sojourner Truth, novelist and poet Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, educator Anna Julia Cooper, newspaper editor Mary Ann Shadd Cary, and activist Ida B. Wells. The distinguished contributors are Hazel V. Carby, Patricia Hill Collins, Karen Baker-Fletcher, Kristin Waters, R. Dianne Bartlow, Carol B. Conaway, Olga Idriss Davis, Vanessa Holford Diana, Evelyn Simien, Janice W. Fernheimer, Michelle N. Garfield, Joy James, Valerie Palmer-Mehta, Carla L. Peterson, Marilyn Richardson, Evelyn M. Simien, Ebony A. Utley, Mary Helen Washington, Melina Abdullah, and Lena Ampadu. The volume will interest scholars and readers of African-American and women’s studies, history, rhetoric, literature, poetry, sociology, political science, and philosophy. This updated edition features a new preface by the editors in the light of new developments in current scholarship.
Reviews
Table of Contents
Preface to New Edition
Acknowledgments
Introduction - Carol B. Conaway and Kristin Waters
PART I: MARIA W. STEWART: BLACK FEMINISM IN PUBLIC PLACES
1. Maria W. Stewart: America’s First Black Woman Political Writer - Marilyn Richardson
2. Maria W. Stewart and the Rhetoric of Black Preaching: Perspectives on Womanism and Black Nationalism - Lena Ampadu
3. A Woman Made of Words: The Rhetorical Invention of Maria W. Stewart - Ebony A. Utley
4. “No Throw-away Woman”: Maria W. Stewart as a Forerunner of Black Feminist Thought - R. Dianne Bartlow
PART II: INCIDENTS IN THE LIVES: FREE WOMEN AND SLAVES
5. “Hear My Voice, Ye Careless Daughters”: Narratives of Slave and Free Women before Emancipation - Hazel V. Carby
6. Literary Societies: The Work of Self-Improvement and Racial Uplift - Michelle N. Garfield
7. “A Sign unto This Nation”: Sojourner Truth, History, Orature, and Modernity - Carla L. Peterson
PART III: HARPERS, HOPKINS, AND SHADD CARY: WRITING OUR WAY TO FREEDOM
8. Narrative Patternings of Resistance in Frances E. W. Harper’s Iola Leroy and Pauline Hopkins’ Contending Forces - Vanessa Holford Diana
9. “We Are All Bound Up Together”: Frances Harper and Feminist Theory - Valerie Palmer-Mehta
10. Mary Ann Shadd Cary: A Visionary of the Black Press - Carol B. Conaway
PART IV: ANNA JULIA COOPER: A VOICE
11. Anna Julia Cooper: A Voice from the South - Mary Helen Washington
12. A Singing Something: Womanist Reflections on Anna Julia Cooper - Karen Baker-Fletcher
13. Arguing from Difference: Cooper, Emerson, Guizot, and a More Harmonious America - Janice W. Fernheimer
PART V: LEADERSHIP, ACTIVISM, AND THE GENIUS OF IDA B. WELLS
14. “I Rose and Found My Voice”: Claiming “Voice” in the Rhetoric of Ida B. Wells - Olga Idriss Davis
15. The Emergence of a Black Feminist Leadership Model: African-American Women and Political Activism in the Nineteenth Century - Melina Abdullah
16. Shadowboxing: Liberation Limbos—Ida B. Wells - Joy James
PART VI: BLACK FEMINIST THEORY: FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY TO THE TWENTY-FIRST
17. Some Core Themes of Nineteenth-Century Black Feminism - Kristin Waters
18. The Politics of Black Feminist Thought - Patricia Hill Collins
19. Black Feminist Theory: Charting a Course for Black Women’s Studies in Political Science - Evelyn M. Simien
Selected Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
Introduction - Carol B. Conaway and Kristin Waters
PART I: MARIA W. STEWART: BLACK FEMINISM IN PUBLIC PLACES
1. Maria W. Stewart: America’s First Black Woman Political Writer - Marilyn Richardson
2. Maria W. Stewart and the Rhetoric of Black Preaching: Perspectives on Womanism and Black Nationalism - Lena Ampadu
3. A Woman Made of Words: The Rhetorical Invention of Maria W. Stewart - Ebony A. Utley
4. “No Throw-away Woman”: Maria W. Stewart as a Forerunner of Black Feminist Thought - R. Dianne Bartlow
PART II: INCIDENTS IN THE LIVES: FREE WOMEN AND SLAVES
5. “Hear My Voice, Ye Careless Daughters”: Narratives of Slave and Free Women before Emancipation - Hazel V. Carby
6. Literary Societies: The Work of Self-Improvement and Racial Uplift - Michelle N. Garfield
7. “A Sign unto This Nation”: Sojourner Truth, History, Orature, and Modernity - Carla L. Peterson
PART III: HARPERS, HOPKINS, AND SHADD CARY: WRITING OUR WAY TO FREEDOM
8. Narrative Patternings of Resistance in Frances E. W. Harper’s Iola Leroy and Pauline Hopkins’ Contending Forces - Vanessa Holford Diana
9. “We Are All Bound Up Together”: Frances Harper and Feminist Theory - Valerie Palmer-Mehta
10. Mary Ann Shadd Cary: A Visionary of the Black Press - Carol B. Conaway
PART IV: ANNA JULIA COOPER: A VOICE
11. Anna Julia Cooper: A Voice from the South - Mary Helen Washington
12. A Singing Something: Womanist Reflections on Anna Julia Cooper - Karen Baker-Fletcher
13. Arguing from Difference: Cooper, Emerson, Guizot, and a More Harmonious America - Janice W. Fernheimer
PART V: LEADERSHIP, ACTIVISM, AND THE GENIUS OF IDA B. WELLS
14. “I Rose and Found My Voice”: Claiming “Voice” in the Rhetoric of Ida B. Wells - Olga Idriss Davis
15. The Emergence of a Black Feminist Leadership Model: African-American Women and Political Activism in the Nineteenth Century - Melina Abdullah
16. Shadowboxing: Liberation Limbos—Ida B. Wells - Joy James
PART VI: BLACK FEMINIST THEORY: FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY TO THE TWENTY-FIRST
17. Some Core Themes of Nineteenth-Century Black Feminism - Kristin Waters
18. The Politics of Black Feminist Thought - Patricia Hill Collins
19. Black Feminist Theory: Charting a Course for Black Women’s Studies in Political Science - Evelyn M. Simien
Selected Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index
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