Early american women critics

Gay Gibson Cima0521847338, 9780521847339, 9780511221118

Early American Women Critics demonstrates that performances of various kinds – religious, political and cultural – enabled women to enter the human rights debates that roiled the American colonies and young republic. Black and white women staked their claims on American citizenship through disparate performances of spirit possession, patriotism, poetic and theatrical production. They protected themselves within various shields which allowed them to speak openly while keeping the individual basis of their identities invisible. Cima shows that between the First and Second Great Religious Awakenings (1730s-1830s), women from West Africa, Europe, and various corners of the American colonies self-consciously adopted performance strategies that enabled them to critique American culture and establish their own diverse and contradictory claims on the body politic. This book restores the primacy of religious performances – Christian, Yoruban, Bantu and Muslim – to the study of early American cultural and political histories, revealing that religion and race are inseparable.

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Table of contents :
Cover……Page 1
Half-title……Page 3
Title……Page 5
Copyright……Page 6
Dedication……Page 7
Contents……Page 9
Acknowledgments……Page 10
Introduction……Page 15
Notes……Page 28
Works cited……Page 29
CHAPTER I Colonial Women Critics: Performing Religion, Race, Possession, and Pornography……Page 32
Sites of access……Page 39
Methods of access……Page 41
Performing criticism/performance criticism……Page 46
Notes……Page 68
Works cited……Page 77
CHAPTER II Revolutionary Women Critics: Performing Rational Christianity, Patriotism, and Race……Page 84
Sites of access……Page 86
Methods of access……Page 100
Performing criticism/performance criticism……Page 110
Sites of access……Page 121
Methods of access……Page 126
Performing criticism/performance criticism……Page 137
Notes……Page 148
Works cited……Page 157
CHAPTER III Republican Women Critics: Performing Christian Activism, American Culture, and Race……Page 163
Sites of access……Page 170
Methods of access……Page 179
Performing criticism/performance criticism……Page 196
Sites of access……Page 207
Methods of access……Page 215
Performing criticism/performance criticism……Page 219
“Bodies” of criticism……Page 228
Notes……Page 230
Works cited……Page 241
Index……Page 249