Journal article
Jennifer Travis
2014
2014
Semantic Scholar
DOI
Cite
Cite
APA
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Travis, J. (2014). Twentieth-Anniversary Reflections on The Culture of Sentiment: Race, Gender, and Sentimentality in Nineteenth-Century America edited by Shirley Samuels (review).
Chicago/Turabian
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Travis, Jennifer. “Twentieth-Anniversary Reflections on The Culture of Sentiment: Race, Gender, and Sentimentality in Nineteenth-Century America Edited by Shirley Samuels (Review)” (2014).
MLA
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Travis, Jennifer. Twentieth-Anniversary Reflections on The Culture of Sentiment: Race, Gender, and Sentimentality in Nineteenth-Century America Edited by Shirley Samuels (Review). 2014.
BibTeX Click to copy
@article{jennifer2014a,
title = {Twentieth-Anniversary Reflections on The Culture of Sentiment: Race, Gender, and Sentimentality in Nineteenth-Century America edited by Shirley Samuels (review)},
year = {2014},
author = {Travis, Jennifer}
}
Abstract
Yet Foster’s Written by Herself, as well as her long tradition of research and scholarship, serves as a reminder that one of the most effective ways to counter patriarchal literatures and ideologies is by foregrounding women’s voices. Foster’s critical work has taught me how to be a conscientious critic, one whose most valuable research highlights black feminist expressivities rather than the scholarship that excludes them. Our work is to illuminate theirs. Never sacrificing attention to her subjects of study, Foster embeds her critiques of (white) patriarchal ideologies within her readings of nineteenthcentury African American women’s literatures. As she examines Sarah L. Forten’s navigation of the “separate sphere ideology” through Forten’s correspondence, for example, Foster challenges racist, oversimplified assertions that black women parroted early (Anglo) American women’s literature by conforming entirely to the racially encoded conventions of true (white) womanhood (52– 53). Moreover, Foster revisits critiques of Phillis Wheatley’s poetry as inattentive to issues of slavery to suggest instead that Wheatley’s poetic versatility enabled her to navigate a whitedominated print culture by emphasizing themes of freedom and responsibility (31). Foster regularly uncovers omissions in previous scholars’ arguments to make early black women’s writing more visible, rather than further entrenched in the weight of scholarly debate. Written by Herself has become a touchstone for my work, reminding me that I can be a critical academic without sacrificing the space on the page rightfully reserved for recovering early African American women’s literatures.
