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First published in 1797, The Columbian Orator helped shape the American mind for the next half century, going through some 23 editions and totaling 200,000 copies in sales. The book was read by virtually every American schoolboy in the first half of the 19th century. As a slave youth, Frederick Douglass owned just one book, and read it frequently, referring to it as a "gem" and his "rich treasure." The Columbian Orator presents 84 selections, most of which are notable examples of oratory on such subjects as nationalism, religious faith, individual liberty, freedom, and slavery, including pieces by Washington, Franklin, Milton, Socrates, and Cicero, as well as heroic poetry and dramatic dialogues. Augmenting these is an essay on effective public speaking which influenced Abraham Lincoln as a young politician. As America experiences a resurgence of interest in the art of debating and oratory, The Columbian Orator--whether as historical artifact or contemporary guidebook--is one of those rare books to be valued for what it meant in its own time, and for how its ideas have endured. Above all, this book is a remarkable compilation of Enlightenment era thought and language that has stood the test of time.

Speeches, addresses, etc. --- Addresses --- Collected papers (Anthologies) --- Discourses --- Orations --- Papers, Collected (Anthologies) --- Festschriften --- Lectures and lecturing --- Enlightenment. --- Frederick Douglass. --- debate. --- early American life. --- eloquence. --- oratory. --- political theory. --- self improvement. --- speaking skills. --- speeches.

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Constraints on freedom, education, and individual dignity have always been fundamental in determining who is able to write, when, and where. Considering the singular experience of the African American writer, William W. Cook and James Tatum here argue that African American literature did not develop apart from canonical Western literary traditions but instead grew out of those literatures, even as it adapted and transformed the cultural traditions and religions of Africa and the African diaspora along the way. Tracing the interaction between African American writers and the literatures of ancient Greece and Rome, from the time of slavery and its aftermath to the civil rights era and on into the present, the authors offer a sustained and lively discussion of the life and work of Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and Rita Dove, among other highly acclaimed poets, novelists, and scholars. Assembling this brilliant and diverse group of African American writers at a moment when our understanding of classical literature is ripe for change, the authors paint an unforgettable portrait of our own reception of "classic" writing, especially as it was inflected by American racial politics.

American literature --- African American authors --- History and criticism. --- Classical influences. --- african american literature, literary criticism, education, dignity, identity, cultural traditions, western lit, religion, diaspora, africa, ancient greece, rome, slavery, civil rights era, jim crow, phillis wheatley, frederick douglass, ralph ellison, rita dove, poets, poetry, famous novelists, black scholars, racial politics, classical influences, leisure moments, genteel classicism, harlem, satire. --- English literature --- Agrarians (Group of writers)

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What is the opposite of freedom? In Freedom as Marronage, Neil Roberts answers this question with definitive force: slavery, and from there he unveils powerful new insights on the human condition as it has been understood between these poles. Crucial to his investigation is the concept of marronage-a form of slave escape that was an important aspect of Caribbean and Latin American slave systems. Examining this overlooked phenomenon-one of action from slavery and toward freedom-he deepens our understanding of freedom itself and the origin of our political ideals. Roberts examines the liminal and transitional space of slave escape in order to develop a theory of freedom as marronage, which contends that freedom is fundamentally located within this space-that it is a form of perpetual flight. He engages a stunning variety of writers, including Hannah Arendt, W. E. B. Du Bois, Angela Davis, Frederick Douglass, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the Rastafari, among others, to develop a compelling lens through which to interpret the quandaries of slavery, freedom, and politics that still confront us today. The result is a sophisticated, interdisciplinary work that unsettles the ways we think about freedom by always casting it in the light of its critical opposite.

Maroons. --- Fugitive slaves --- Liberty. --- africana studies, slavery, enslaved, history, historical, human condition, humanity, opposition, free, escape, caribbean, latin america, systems, power, politics, political, ideals, morals, values, liminal, transitional, flight, analysis, critique, critical, academic, scholarly, research, theory, theoretical, hannah arendt, web du bois, angela davis, frederick douglass, samuel taylor coleridge, literary, literature.

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"Throughout US history, black people have been configured as sociolegal nonpersons, a subgenre of the human. Being Property Once Myself delves into the literary imagination and ethical concerns that have emerged from this experience. Each chapter tracks a specific animal figure-the rat, the cock, the mule, the dog, and the shark-in the works of black authors such as Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Jesmyn Ward, and Robert Hayden. The plantation, the wilderness, the kitchenette overrun with pests, the simultaneous valuation and sale of animals and enslaved people-all are sites made unforgettable by literature in which we find black and animal life in fraught proximity. Joshua Bennett argues that animal figures are deployed in these texts to assert a theory of black sociality and to combat dominant claims about the limits of personhood. Bennett also turns to the black radical tradition to challenge the pervasiveness of antiblackness in discourses surrounding the environment and animals. Being Property Once Myself is an incisive work of literary criticism and a close reading of undertheorized notions of dehumanization and the Anthropocene"--

Blacks in literature. --- American literature --- Animals in literature. --- Literature and race --- Anthropomorphism in literature. --- African American authors --- History and criticism. --- Race and literature --- Race --- Negroes in literature --- Blacks in literature --- Black people in literature. --- American literature - African American authors - History and criticism --- Literature and race - United States --- Animals in literature --- Anthropomorphism in literature --- african american. --- afrofuturism. --- animal studies. --- animals literature. --- anthropocene. --- bipoc authors. --- black experience. --- black masculinity. --- critical race theory. --- du bois. --- feminist thought. --- frederick douglass. --- harlem renaissance. --- modern poetry. --- motherhood. --- white supremacist.

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In 'Runaway Genres', Yogita Goyal tracks the emergence of slavery as the defining template through which current forms of human rights abuses are understood. The post-black satire of Paul Beatty and Mat Johnson, modern slave narratives from Sudan to Sierra Leone, and the new Afropolitan diaspora of writers like Teju Cole and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie all are woven into Goyal's argument for the slave narrative as a new world literary genre, exploring the full complexity of this new ethical globalism. From the humanitarian spectacles of Kony 2012 and #BringBackOurGirls through gothic literature, 'Runaway Genres' unravels, for instance, how and why the African child soldier has now appeared as the afterlife of the Atlantic slave.0Goyal argues that in order to fathom forms of freedom and bondage today-from unlawful detention to sex trafficking to the refugee crisis to genocide-we must turn to contemporary literature, which reveals how the literary forms used to tell these stories derive from the antebellum genre of the slave narrative. Exploring the ethics and aesthetics of globalism, the book presents alternative conceptions of human rights, showing that the revival and proliferation of slave narratives offers not just an occasion to revisit the Atlantic past, but also for re-narrating the global present. In reassessing these legacies and their ongoing relation to race and the human, 'Runaway Genres' creates a new map with which to navigate contemporary black diaspora literature.

African American. --- African. --- Afropolitan. --- Ahmadou Kourouma. --- Atlantic. --- Caryl Phillips. --- Chimamanda Adichie. --- Chris Abani. --- Colson Whitehead. --- Dave Eggers. --- Dinaw Mengestu. --- Francis Bok. --- Frederick Douglass. --- Global South. --- Ishmael Beah. --- Mat Johnson. --- NoViolet Bulawayo. --- Othello. --- Paul Beatty. --- Susan Minot. --- Teju Cole. --- Toni Morrison. --- Underground Railroad. --- abolition. --- absurd. --- affect. --- analogy. --- black Atlantic. --- blackness. --- child soldier. --- diaspora. --- fiction and slavery. --- gothic. --- human rights. --- human trafficking. --- humanitarianism. --- immigrant. --- intertextuality. --- memoir. --- modern slavery. --- neo-slave narrative. --- neoliberal. --- post-blackness. --- postcolonial. --- refugees. --- satire. --- sentimentalism. --- slave narrative. --- trauma. --- ventriloquism. --- war.