Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Priscilla Wald’s groundbreaking project is a study of American cultural identity in the context of theories of subjectivity and nationalism.
Constituting Americans makes an important, because controversial, intervention in debates over intercultural analysis of African American and ‘ethinc’ literatures."—Susan Gilman, University of California, Santa Cruz
"With beautiful sensitivity to language, Wald offers a unique blend of nuanced textual analysis and historical interpretation. The result is a provocative and well researched account of national stories and the concept of personhood."—Akhil Reed Amar, Yale Law School
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Constituting Americans does more than immensely enrich current scholarship on nationalism, subjectivity, and U.S. literature and culture. By ranging in its objects of study from law, journalism, psychology, and history to sociology and political documents, it also sets a standard for the contribution of literary criticism to interdisciplinary study.” -- Maggie Sale * American Literature *
Table of ContentsAbbreviations ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
1. Neither Citizen Nor Alien: National Narratives, Frederick Douglass ,and the Politics of Self-Definition 14
2. "As From a Faithful Mirror":
Pierre, Our Nig, and Literary Nationalism 106
3. "The Strange Meaning of Being Black":
The Souls of Black Folk and the Narrative of History 172
4. A "Losing-Self Sense":
The Making of Americans and the Anxiety of Identity 237
Coda: An American "We" 299
Notes 305
Selected Bibliography 353
Index 375
