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Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9395-2286
AccessType
Open Access Dissertation
Document Type
dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Program
Comparative Literature
Year Degree Awarded
2022
Month Degree Awarded
September
First Advisor
Kathryn Lachman
Second Advisor
Dawn Fulton
Third Advisor
Kaiama L. Glover
Fourth Advisor
Rachel Mordecai
Fifth Advisor
Corine Tachtiris
Subject Categories
African American Studies | Comparative Literature | Digital Humanities | Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | French and Francophone Literature | Latin American Languages and Societies | Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies | Women's History
Abstract
“Redressing History” explores how twentieth- and twenty-first century Black women authors tell the story of slavery in the Americas. This study asks: given the limited number of archival records authored by enslaved and free women of color, what other materials can we consider in order to access and share women’s stories and experiences of slavery worlds? “Redressing History” suggests that the significant, though understudied, role of clothes and textiles in the construction of Atlantic World identities and diasporic communities makes fashion a powerful narrative mode in history. Comparing representations of textiles, textile practices, and clothing in historical counternarratives from Haiti, Jamaica, Guadeloupe, and the United States, “Redressing History” foregrounds the intimacies of cloth and storytelling to understand the role of fiction in addressing/redressing the marginalization of Black women’s voices and actions within colonial archives. By examining textile arts and dress practices as powerful strategies of authorial possibility in novels by Toni Morrison, Marie Chauvet, Simone Schwarz-Bart, and Andrea Levy, “Redressing History” offers a transhistorical account of the variety of ways in which Black women claim—and have been claiming—agency over the fashioning of their own bodies and stories in both colonial history and the contemporary global literary market.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/31052213
Recommended Citation
Mei, Siobhan M., "Redressing History: Texts and Textiles in Counternarratives of Slavery" (2022). Doctoral Dissertations. 2678.
https://doi.org/10.7275/31052213
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/2678
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Included in
African American Studies Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, Digital Humanities Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, French and Francophone Literature Commons, Latin American Languages and Societies Commons, Women's History Commons