Nineteenth‐Century African American Literature and the ‘New Regionalism’

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AbstractWhile the study of nineteenth‐century African American literature has gained a much stronger position in the academy and while authors like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs are essentially canonized, the field often remains reduced to the study of stories of the South (especially slave narratives) published in a handful of northeastern urban centers. However, paired with recent recovery efforts, new attention to questions of location and especially to various understudied regions in the nineteenth‐century United States like the Black West may cause a radical rethinking of nineteenth‐century Black textual presences. This essay thus offers a preliminary discussion of the following questions surrounding the ‘new regionalism’ within the study of nineteenth‐century African American literature: How do ‘new regionalist’ scholars define and deploy ideas of ‘region,’ place, and location – especially given the period’s mobility and diversity? How do they engage with the expectations and stereotypes inherent in existing regional labels including those tied to race and racial absence? How do the (sometimes) micro‐historic approaches of ‘new regionalism’ fit in dialogue with seemingly broader conceptions of hemispheric studies and/or a ‘Black Atlantic’? What do ‘new regionalist’ approaches offer the field of African American literature and the broader community?