The Cambridge companion to the Black body in American literature / edited by Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, Pomona College.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Sherrard-Johnson, Cherene, 1973- editor.

Series:

Cambridge companions to literature.

Cambridge companions to topics

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--History and criticism.

American literature.

Black race--Philosophy.

Black race.

Human body in literature.

Black people in literature.

Race in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xv, 306 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2024.

Summary:

"This volume tracks and uncovers the Black body as a persistent presence and absence in American literature. It provides an invaluable guide for teachers and students interested in literary representations of Blackness and embodiment. It centers Black thinking about Black embodiment from current, diverse, and intersectional perspectives"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Cover

Half-title

Title page

Imprints page

Table of Contents

List of Figures

Notes on Contributors

Acknowledgments

Celestial Bodies: An Introduction

The Black Body Is/Is Not a Metaphor

Chapter Summaries

Part I Extraction and Abstraction

1 Theorizing Black Bodies

''whose morals and humanity are so inverted''

''wanton Tyranny''

''You never knew ...''

2 The Black Body and the Medical Archive

Blackness, Aesthetics, and the Origins of Modern Medicine

Medicine and Plantation Slavery

The ''Black Doctor''

Medicine and the Afterlives of Slavery

3 Laboring Bodies

The Road to Disability

The Injuries of Girlhood

Tales of Reinvention

4 Animalia Americana

Pets

Property

Pests

Pursuit

5 Black Ecological Insurgencies

6 The Black Body in Nature

Witnessing the Wilderness: The Woods and the African American Pastoral Tradition

Seeding the Soil: Gardening as Ancestral Communion

Part II Black Optics: Invisibility and Hypervisibility

7 Synesthetic Embodiment

Everyday Spectacles

Maud Martha's Disappearing Acts

Conclusion

8 Dancing Bodies

The Look and Feel of the Cabaret

The Feel of Dance

The Politics of Dance

9 Celebrity Bodies

Touissaint Louverture and the Spectacle of Black Masculinity

Haiti, History, and the Symbolic Order of Celebrity Embodiment

Commemoration in the Age of Decolonialization: Performing Celebrity between Black Life and Death

The Black Queer Feminist Uses of Celebrity

10 Embodied Black Aliveness

Afrofuturist Elements

Enfleshment and Embodiment

The Body Transcendent

Moving Beyond Time

Liberatory Aliveness

11 Staging Racial Passing

The Revival of a Genre

Blackness, Performance, and Passing

From The Octoroon, An Octoroon

Staging the Twenty-First Century Passing Plot.

Casting the Passing Plot

12 Passing Bodies

On Character

Passing's Racial Optometry

Queer Passing

On Casting

On Two Endings

Part III Quare Bodies

13 Body of Knowledge: Audre Lorde's Zami

14 The Black Body, Violence, and Religion

Black Bodies, Captivity, and Religion

Contemporary Implications

15 Black Cripistemologies

Counter Reading in Home

16 Black Erotic Bodies

Introduction

Fungible and Dispossessed: The Creation of Black Erotic Bodies

On Erotic Freedom and Power

Multiplicity, the Erotic and the Pursuit of Pleasure

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 09 May 2024).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781009204163

1009204165

9781009204170

1009204173

9781009204200

1009204203