Race and nature from transcendentalism to the Harlem Renaissance / Paul Outka.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Outka, Paul.

Series:

Signs of race

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Racism--United States--History--19th century.

Racism.

Environmentalism--Political aspects.

History.

Environmentalism.

Environmentalism--Social aspects.

Wilderness areas--Political aspects.

Wilderness areas.

Wilderness areas--Social aspects.

Philosophy of nature.

United States.

Racism--United States--History--20th century.

African Americans--Race identity.

African Americans.

White people--Race identity--United States.

White people.

White people--Race identity.

Philosophy of nature--United States--History.

Wilderness areas--Social aspects--United States--History.

Wilderness areas--Political aspects--United States--History.

Environmentalism--Social aspects--United States--History.

Environmentalism--Political aspects--United States--History.

United States--Race relations.

Race relations.

Physical Description:

xiii, 266 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Summary:

Race and Nature from Transcendentalism to the Harlem Renaissance examines a neglected but centrally important issue in critical race studies and ecocriticism: how natural experience became racialized in America from the antebellum period through the early twentieth century. Drawing on theories of sublimity and trauma the book offers a critical and cultural history of the racial fault line in American environmentalism that to this day divides largely white wilderness preservation groups and the largely minority environmental justice movement. Outka offers a detailed exploration of the historically fraught relation between the construction of natural experience and of white and black racial identity. In denaturalizing race and racializing nature, the book bridges race theory and ecocriticism in a way vitally important to both disciplines.

Contents:

1 Introduction: The Sublime and the Traumatic 1

2 The Colonial Pastoral, Abolition, and the Transcendentalist Sublime 27

3 "Behold a Man Transformed into a Brute": Slavery and Antebellum Nature 51

4 Trauma, Postbellum Nostalgia, and the Lost Pastoral 81

5 Trauma and Metamorphosis in Charles Chesnutt's Conjure Tales 103

6 Strange Fruit 127

7 White Flight 151

8 Migrations 171

Coda: Prospects for an Antiracist Ecological Sublime 201.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [245]-260) and index.

ISBN:

0230602967

9780230602960

OCLC:

154703603

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description