BIMAAR · Black Inter-American Mobility and Autobiography in the Age of Revolutions (1760-1860)
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2019-09-02 → 2022-01-30
- EU contribution
- €212,934
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Black Inter-American Mobility and Autobiography in the Age of Revolutions (1760-1860)
The project explored the ways autobiographies by Black authors from the Americas addressed different forms of mobility of Black people in the region during the Age of Revolutions and its immediate aftermath (1760-1860). During this era, several countries of the region gained their independence from European colonisers and Black slavery came under scrutiny and was abolished in large parts of the Americas. Simultaneously, a flourishing transatlantic print culture provided niches of access to Black people testifying to their lives and experiences in slavery and freedom to interested audiences. The objective of the project was to study how major types of transnational Black autobiography from the period address different forms of Black mobility in the Americas and the Atlantic World. In conclusion, the research has demonstrated how these texts testified to experiences of, and claims to, Black mobility and how they used literary means to achieve their sociopolitical goals. The project thereby has deepened public understanding of the Black Americas and their interactions with Africa and Europe during the Age of Revolutions and beyond.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
The interdisciplinary research explores the ways transnational autobiographies by black authors address different forms of black mobility in the Americas during the Age of Revolutions and its aftermath until the onset of the US American Civil War (1760-1860). During that time, large parts of the Americas gained their independence from the European colonial powers. Simultaneously, black-authored narrative texts emerged in the region. Among them, autobiographies played a key role as vehicles of asserting black selfhood and participating in societal discourses. Four major types of black life narratives developed at the time: slave narratives, Indian captivity narratives, spiritual autobiographies, and memoirs-as-travelogues. In all of them different form of (im)mobility played a defining role in shaping black identities and experiences. The research is the first of its kind to study transnational black autobiographies from across the Americas in the Age of Revolutions with a focus the (voluntary or enforced) spatial, socio-cultural, and narrative mobilities of black people. Its objective is to produce a series of scholarly essays, to be subsequently joined into the first comprehensive study on the subject. Drawing on the theoretical and methodological approaches of Inter-American, Black Atlantic, Mobility, and Autobiography Studies, the project closes a gap in the scholarship of the Americas and the Atlantic world. Due to the aesthetic innovation and societal relevance of autobiography in the region from 1760-1860, the research will be based on a literary analysis of the major types of black Inter-American life writing of the era. In so doing, it will not only chart black contributions to autobiography but also advance the theoretical study of the genre. Home to the renowned Institute of Black Atlantic Research and its world-class scholars of the Early Black Americas and Black Atlantic (Prof Rice, Dr Hoermann, Dr Saxon), UCLAN provides an ideal host institution.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITY OF LANCASHIRE · PRESTONCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union