A01=Maria O'Malley
alternative history
antebellum US
Author_Maria O'Malley
Category=DSB
Category=DSK
Category=DSRC
Category=JBSF1
contact narratives
domesticity
early American literature
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
foundational violence
Haitian Revolution
historical writing
Revolutionary War
speculative fiction
territorial conquest
women's perspectives
Product details
- ISBN 9780807178485
- Weight: 221g
- Dimensions: 152 x 228mm
- Publication Date: 07 Dec 2022
- Publisher: Louisiana State University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In Imaginary Empires, Maria O'Malley examines early American texts published between 1767 and 1867 whose narratives represent women's engagement in the formation of empire. Her analysis unearths a variety of responses to contact, exchange, and cohabitation in the early United States, stressing the possibilities inherent in the literary to foster participation, resignification, and rapprochement.
New readings of The Female American, Leonora Sansay's Secret History, Catharine Maria Sedgwick's Hope Leslie, Lydia Maria Child's A Romance of the Republic, and Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl confound the metaphors of ghosts, haunting, and amnesia that proliferate in many recent studies of early US literary history. Instead, as O'Malley shows, these writings foreground acts of foundational violence involved in the militarization of domestic spaces, the legal impediments to the transfer of property and wealth, and the geopolitical standing of the United States. Racialized and gendered figures in the texts refuse to die, leave, or stay silent. In imagining different kinds of futures, these writers reckon with the ambivalent role of women in empire-building as they negotiate between their own subordinate position in society and their exertion of sovereignty over others.
By tracing a thread of virtual history found in works by women, Imaginary Empires explores how reflections of the past offer a means of shaping future sociopolitical formations.
New readings of The Female American, Leonora Sansay's Secret History, Catharine Maria Sedgwick's Hope Leslie, Lydia Maria Child's A Romance of the Republic, and Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl confound the metaphors of ghosts, haunting, and amnesia that proliferate in many recent studies of early US literary history. Instead, as O'Malley shows, these writings foreground acts of foundational violence involved in the militarization of domestic spaces, the legal impediments to the transfer of property and wealth, and the geopolitical standing of the United States. Racialized and gendered figures in the texts refuse to die, leave, or stay silent. In imagining different kinds of futures, these writers reckon with the ambivalent role of women in empire-building as they negotiate between their own subordinate position in society and their exertion of sovereignty over others.
By tracing a thread of virtual history found in works by women, Imaginary Empires explores how reflections of the past offer a means of shaping future sociopolitical formations.
