Abolitionist Cosmopolitanism: Reconfiguring Gender, Race, and Nation in American Antislavery Literature

Pia Wiegmink is Professor of Slavery and Dependency Studies at Bonn University, Germany. She is co-editor of German Entanglements with Slavery (Routledge, 2017) and American Cultures as Transnational Performance (Routledge, 2021).For Abolitionist Cosmopolitanism, Pia Wiegmink received the 2020 EAAS Rob Kroes Award.

• AcknowledgementsList of Figures1 Introduction2 Mapping the Field1Abolitionist Literature Matters2Transnational American Antislavery Literature3Abolitionist Cosmopolitanism3 Friends of Freedom: Female Editorship and Transatlantic Communities of Affection in The Liberty Bell1Abolitionist Print Culture and Gift-Giving2The Gift Book as Chronicle of Transatlantic Affective Communities3Fundraising for the Cause: The Annual Boston Antislavery Fair4 Gendered Global Geographies of American Antislavery Literature in The Liberty Bell1Haiti: Edmund Quincy’s “Two Nights in St. Domingo” (1843)2Egypt: Maria Lowell’s “Africa” (1849)3The United States: Elizabeth Barret Browning’s “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” (1848)5 Travelling Beyond the Slave Narrative: African American Women’s Autobiography1Revisiting the Slave Narrative: Discourses of Travel in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)2Reports From Russia and Jamaica: Nancy Prince’s Narrative of the Life and Times of Mrs. Nancy Prince (1850)3Interlude: Nancy Prince’s Travel Account The West Indies (1841)4Reversing Slave Itineraries: Eliza Potter’s A Hairdresser’s Experience in High Life (1859)6 Travelling Letters of Antislavery: African American Women’s Epistolary Writing1Sarah Parker Remond’s Epistolary Writing on Black Freedom of Movement2Harriet Jacobs’s First Public Letter (1853) and Women’s Transatlantic Antislavery Epistolary Battles7 Antislavery, Immigration, and German American Women’s Literature1Alexander von Humboldt, Carl Schutz’ “True Americanism” (1859), and German American Abolitionist Self-Fashioning2German Antislavery Sentiments and the Cult of German Womanhood in America: Talvj’s The Exiles (1852)3German American Utopian Communities: Mathilde Franziska Anneke’s “Uhland in Texas” (1866)4Coda: Ottilie Assing’s Writings on Frederick Douglass8 ConclusionWorks CitedIndex

"The book is thoughtful, well written, and carefully researched from an interdisciplinary perspective. An indispensable guide to antislavery literature."– J. W. Miller, in: Choice (2023) 61 (1).