Early American Women Critics: Performance, Religion, Race
by Gay Gibson Cima /
2006 / English / PDF
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Early American Women Critics demonstrates that performances of
various kinds - religious, political and cultural - enabled women
to enter the human rights debates that roiled the American colonies
and young republic. Black and white women staked their claims on
American citizenship through disparate performances of spirit
possession, patriotism, poetic and theatrical production. They
protected themselves within various shields which allowed them to
speak openly while keeping the individual basis of their identities
invisible. Cima shows that between the First and Second Great
Religious Awakenings (1730s-1830s), women from West Africa, Europe,
and various corners of the American colonies self-consciously
adopted performance strategies that enabled them to critique
American culture and establish their own diverse and contradictory
claims on the body politic. This book restores the primacy of
religious performances - Christian, Yoruban, Bantu and Muslim - to
the study of early American cultural and political histories,
revealing that religion and race are inseparable.
Early American Women Critics demonstrates that performances of
various kinds - religious, political and cultural - enabled women
to enter the human rights debates that roiled the American colonies
and young republic. Black and white women staked their claims on
American citizenship through disparate performances of spirit
possession, patriotism, poetic and theatrical production. They
protected themselves within various shields which allowed them to
speak openly while keeping the individual basis of their identities
invisible. Cima shows that between the First and Second Great
Religious Awakenings (1730s-1830s), women from West Africa, Europe,
and various corners of the American colonies self-consciously
adopted performance strategies that enabled them to critique
American culture and establish their own diverse and contradictory
claims on the body politic. This book restores the primacy of
religious performances - Christian, Yoruban, Bantu and Muslim - to
the study of early American cultural and political histories,
revealing that religion and race are inseparable.