Articulating Resistance in African American Slave Narratives

Articulating Resistance: A study of African American Slave Narrative enlists a wide variety of scholarly perspectives and critical approaches in analyzing the antebellum slave autobiographies and their place within American cultural consciousness and literary tradition. This book employs the cultural studies strategy of inter- textual reading-- analyzing the Slave Narrative in the context of historical and legal documents, newspaper reports, religious and cultural practices of the slave and slave holders. The Narratives of Olaudah Equiano, Fredrick Douglass, and William Wells Brown among others are analyzed as cultural arguments that challenge normative representations of nineteenth century race relations. Through the Narratives of the women slaves this study interrogates the stereotypes of Black female sexuality which have been uncritically reproduced in contemporary historiography and popular culture.The Slave Narratives can be widely utilized in classroom situation as pedagogical tools for studying political and socio-cultural dimensions of minority self-expression.

Articulating Resistance will appeal both to students and scholars attempting to integrate questions of race, class and gender into literature, and to the general reader curious about the history of slavery in America.

Seema Sharma (b. 1968) is deeply interested in African American literature, Postcolonial Studies, Feminist Criticism and Theory  of Translation. Her articles in these areas have been published in several literary journals. She has also translated and published creative and critical works from Hindi to English. She was awarded the UCG fellowship for her MPhil and PhD research. Recently she was nominated for the United States International Visitor Leadership Program on "Developing American Studies Curricula." Seema Sharma received her BA, MA and MPhil degree in English Literature from Delhi University and PhD from SNDT University, Mumbai. She has a taught at Gujarat University, Ahmedabad for twelve years and is currently Associate Professor of English literature at Jai Hind College, University Of Mumbai.