Spectacular Secret
Regular price
€92.99
19th century
A01=Jacqueline Goldsby
african americans
american culture
Author_Jacqueline Goldsby
Category=DSB
criticism
cultural studies
death
emmett till
english
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
government
gwendolyn brooks
historical
history
ida b wells
james weldon johnson
literary
literature
lynched
lynching
mob mentality
modernity
murder
nation
national
photographs
photography
public punishment
race
racism
racist practices
secrecy
secrets
social violence
stephen crane
united states of america
violent actions
Product details
- ISBN 9780226301372
- Weight: 822g
- Dimensions: 16 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 01 Dec 2005
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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This incisive study takes on one of the grimmest secrets in America's national life - the history of lynching and, more generally, the public punishment of African Americans. Jacqueline Goldsby shows that lynching cannot be explained away as a phenomenon peculiar to the South or as the perverse culmination of racist politics. Rather, lynching - a highly visible form of social violence that has historically been shrouded in secrecy - was in fact a fundamental part of the national consciousness whose cultural logic played a pivotal role in the making of American modernity. To pursue this argument, Goldsby traces lynching's history by taking up select mob murders and studying them together with key literary works. She focuses on three prominent authors - Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Stephen Crane, and James Weldon Johnson - and shows how their own encounters with lynching influenced their analyses of it. She also examines a recently assembled archive of evidence - lynching photographs - to show how photography structured the nation's perception of lynching violence before World War I.
Finally, Goldsby considers the way lynching persisted into the twentieth century, discussing the lynching of Emmett Till in 1955 and the ballad-elegies of Gwendolyn Brooks to which his murder gave rise. An empathic and perceptive work, "A Spectacular Secret" will make an important contribution to the study of American history and literature.
Jacqueline Goldsby is assistant professor of English at the University of Chicago.
