Black pro se : authorship and the limits of law in nineteenth-century African American literature / Faith Barter.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Barter, Faith Elizabeth, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--African American authors--History and criticism.

American literature.

American literature--19th century--History and criticism.

Law and literature--United States--History--19th century.

Law and literature.

Genre:

Literary criticism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2025]

Summary:

Black thinkers in the antebellum United States grappled with what it meant to inhabit a place, a history, and a violent legal regime. In newspapers and pamphlets, political speeches, and fiction, Black writers persistently imagined alternative and liberatory legal futures. In reading these writers as architects of legal possibility, Faith Barter mobilizes the coincidental intimacy of prose and the legal term pro se, which refers to litigants who represent themselves in court. The book studies multiple literary genres--short stories, novels, freedom narratives, speeches, confessions, periodicals, and pamphlets--alongside legal historical treatises, trial transcripts, judicial opinions, and statutes. Barter juxtaposes nineteenth-century law and literature to show how Black writers counterintuitively used legal forms to reimagine their own relationships to time and place. Organized around four legal forms--appeal, confession, jurisdiction, and precedent--this book demonstrates how Black writers creatively used them to challenge the logics of their oppression. Reading Black writers not merely as witnesses or victims but as visionaries for what the legal system could be, this book excavates the importance of legal thinking in the African American literary tradition.

Contents:

Appeal

Confession

Jurisdiction

Precedent

Coda : African American literary futures and law's possibilities.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Online resource; title from PDF title page (JSTOR, viewed February 27, 2026).

Other Format:

Print version: Barter, Faith Elizabeth Black pro se

ISBN:

9781469687711

1469687712

9781469687728

1469687720

9781469685984

1469685981

9781469685991

146968599X

OCLC:

1523537953

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license