http://www.openculture.com/2014/07/full-lecture-and-reading-list-from-sun-ras-1971-uc-berkeley-course.html

This link leads to an article that includes a UC Berkeley lecture that Sun Ra did for an American Studies course. The link also includes a reading list that Sun Ra put together. I couldn’t upload the link as a file, so instead I found a…[Read more]

In this article Mel Y. Chen focuses on “the extended meanings of toxicity” as they pertain to race by focusing on a case of lead panic in toys. I found this via Project Muse

https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/poetrycenter/bundles/227911

This is a link to a conversation in which John Keene discusses his collection of short stories and novellas entitled “Counternarratives.” I’ve been infatuated with Keene’s book recently and it has been inspiring a lot of the thinking I’ve been doing academically. Keene and Cao touch…[Read more]

Weheliye uses this short article as an opportunity to to respond to certain engagements with his work and to reflect on the connections between his work in “Phonographies” and his latest book “Habeus Viscus.”

This piece uses Sansay’s epistolary novel “Secret History or the Horrors of S. Domingo” in order to trouble the simple correlation between the early American novel and U.S. nation building. Instead, Dillon explores the ways in which Sansay’s use of sex and gender within a private sphere to trouble the politics of a larger community disarticulates…[Read more]

This was just a sample of a paper from 1790’s Grenada I pulled while looking through the Caribbean Newspaper Database. I was more interested in the database itself than this particular paper, but it was interesting to see the advertisement for a “catoptric” show of illusions in which Signor Falconi displays the “terrors of nature in miniature” by…[Read more]

This article was published in PMLA in 2008 and is written by Monique Allewaert. It reads American plantation zones as sites of resistance for enslaved Africans and Indigenous Americans within the Early American colonial period.

This is a book I found from 1849 that is titled as an “Indian Guide to Health.” It focuses on natural remedies for common sicknesses in the Americas, and speaks to appropriation of indigenous practices and their reframing as “knowledge.” I found it through Documenting the American South Digital Archive.

Here is a link to the book:…[Read more]

This article pushes back on the notion that American Gothic novels are centered around feelings of guilt in order to highlight the tensions between the Gothic American novel and Enlightenment philosophy. Using Brockden Brown’s “Arthur Mervyn” as an example, the author aims to show that “gothic tropes effectively displace the Enlightenment…[Read more]

This is an article from a 2007 issue of Critical Inquiry which I think was later used as a chapter in Berlant’s book. In it, Berlant discusses contemporary discussions around sovereignty in terms of biopolitics. She elucidates “slow death,” which she describes as “a condition of being worn out by the process of reproducing life,” through a…[Read more]

Attached is a map titled “The windward passage,” which shows various routes around Cuba and Haiti. It is dated1794. The attached pdf isn’t that great so here is a link: http://www.dloc.com/UF00029161/00001/1x. I found this through the Digital Library of the Caribbean Archive.

I am interested in this essay for the way in which it utilizes a large span of theoretical territories, including object theory, Marxist criticism, affect and aesthetic theory, in order to perform a close reading of two Sentimental novels. Ultimately Lilley is exploring the space of feeling, either as a public value to be exchanged or a private…[Read more]

This link leads to an artist talk by Leah Gordon, who is a British Photojournalist and artist. In the talk she discusses her photo exhibit entitled “Kanaval” which is a contemporary examination of Haitian Vodou culture. I’m currently developing an interest in the colonial history of Haiti…[Read more]

I’ve yet to read Blake, but am interested in its relation to and critique of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Although I’m not completely sold on the argument of this particular novel, I do think that the link between conspiracy and community is useful and the author does a good job of teasing out the potentially subversive nature of a conspiratorial community.…[Read more]

This is a review of Beckwourth’s dictated autobiography in the British weekly periodical “The Leader” from 1856. Beckwourth himself is of interest to me as his story brings together issues of race and indigeneity within the American 19th-century. Being from a British periodical, this piece gives a glimpse into how his story was perceived and…[Read more]

This is a piece published in Callaloo in 2006 which aims to open ecocritical discourse towards Black American writers. Hicks is particularly interested in how reading Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and Richard Wright reframes ecocriticism beyond its usual canon of writers (Thoreau, Muir, etc.) and how this helps to redefine the concept of “Nature”…[Read more]

Here is a profile on Ralph Ellison from 1952, the year that Invisible Man was published. Of interest in this short profile is Ellison’s alignment with surrealism, as well as the development of a second novel during the writing of Invisible Man. Ellison’s short discussion about his friendship with Richard Wright is also worth noting. I found this…[Read more]