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Bonds of citizenship : law and the labors of emancipation / Hoang Gia Phan.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: America and the long 19th centuryPublisher: New York : New York University Press, [2013]Copyright date: ©2013Description: 1 online resource (x, 256 pages)Content type:
  • text
Media type:
  • computer
Carrier type:
  • online resource
ISBN:
  • 9780814738931
  • 0814738931
Subject(s): Genre/Form: Additional physical formats: Print version:: Bonds of citizenship.DDC classification:
  • 342.7308/7 23
LOC classification:
  • KF482
Online resources:
Contents:
Introduction : "A man from another country" : citizenship and the bonds of labor -- Bound by law : apprenticeship and the culture of "free" labor -- Civic virtues : narrative form and the trial of character in early America -- Fugitive bonds : contract and the culture of constitutionalism -- Hereditary bondsman : Frederick Douglass and the spirit of the law -- "If man will strike" : Moby-Dick and the letter of the law -- Conclusion : the labors of emancipation : founded law and freedom defined.
Summary: The author argues that in the age of Emancipation the cultural attributes of free personhood became identified with the legal rights and privileges of the citizen, and that individual freedom thus became identified with the nation-state. He situates the emergence of American citizenship and the American novel within the context of Atlantic slavery and Anglo-American legal culture, placing early American texts by Hector St. John de Crévecœur, Benjamin Franklin, and Charles Brockden Brown alongside Black Atlantic texts by Ottobah Cugoano and Olaudah Equiano. Beginning with a revisionary reading of the Constitution's "slavery clauses," the author recovers indentured servitude as a transitional form of labor bondage that helped define the key terms of modern U.S. citizenship: mobility, volition, and contract. This book demonstrates how citizenship and civic culture were transformed by antebellum debates over slavery, free labor, and national Union, while analyzing the writings of Frederick Douglass and Herman Melville alongside a wide-ranging archive of lesser-known antebellum legal and literary texts in the context of changing conceptions of constitutionalism, property, and contract. Situated at the nexus of literary criticism, legal studies, and labor history, this book challenges the founding fiction of a pro-slavery Constitution central to American letters and legal culture. -- Publisher's website.
Holdings
Item type Current library Collection Call number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
eBook eBook e-Library EBSCO Social Science Available
Total holds: 0

Includes bibliographical references (pages 211-247) and index.

Introduction : "A man from another country" : citizenship and the bonds of labor -- Bound by law : apprenticeship and the culture of "free" labor -- Civic virtues : narrative form and the trial of character in early America -- Fugitive bonds : contract and the culture of constitutionalism -- Hereditary bondsman : Frederick Douglass and the spirit of the law -- "If man will strike" : Moby-Dick and the letter of the law -- Conclusion : the labors of emancipation : founded law and freedom defined.

Print version record.

The author argues that in the age of Emancipation the cultural attributes of free personhood became identified with the legal rights and privileges of the citizen, and that individual freedom thus became identified with the nation-state. He situates the emergence of American citizenship and the American novel within the context of Atlantic slavery and Anglo-American legal culture, placing early American texts by Hector St. John de Crévecœur, Benjamin Franklin, and Charles Brockden Brown alongside Black Atlantic texts by Ottobah Cugoano and Olaudah Equiano. Beginning with a revisionary reading of the Constitution's "slavery clauses," the author recovers indentured servitude as a transitional form of labor bondage that helped define the key terms of modern U.S. citizenship: mobility, volition, and contract. This book demonstrates how citizenship and civic culture were transformed by antebellum debates over slavery, free labor, and national Union, while analyzing the writings of Frederick Douglass and Herman Melville alongside a wide-ranging archive of lesser-known antebellum legal and literary texts in the context of changing conceptions of constitutionalism, property, and contract. Situated at the nexus of literary criticism, legal studies, and labor history, this book challenges the founding fiction of a pro-slavery Constitution central to American letters and legal culture. -- Publisher's website.

WorldCat record variable field(s) change: 650

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