Transformable Race and the Literatures of Early America

FAIN: FT-57817-10

Katy L. Chiles
University of Tennessee, Knoxville (Knoxville, TN 37916-3801)

This book seeks to understand how the eighteenth-century scientific idea that race was transformable influenced early American literature. As fantastical as it seems today, many Americans during the 1700s believed that race was an external bodily condition that was produced incrementally and could change over time. Focusing on writers such as Benjamin Franklin, Phillis Wheatley, and J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, my project explores how authors used figurative language emphasizing or questioning the potential malleability of physical features to describe a person's race. This study examines how writers drew upon these ideas about race so that we can better understand how science and literature interact in the construction of racial categories. Transformable Race and the Literatures of Early America will tell the story of how early American authors imagined, contributed to, and challenged the ways that one's racial identity could be formed in the time of the nation's founding.

Media Coverage

Transformable Race (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Brooks Clark
Publication: Quest
Date: 2/28/2016
URL: http://quest.utk.edu/2016/transformable-race-2/

The Origins of Racial Thought (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Libby Coleman
Publication: OZY
Date: 2/20/2016
URL: http://www.ozy.com/flashback/the-origins-of-racist-thought/62671

Engaging Race in the Classroom (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Allie Reznik
Publication: Flourishing Academic
Date: 9/7/2016
URL: http://flourishingacademic.wordpress.com/2015/02/23/engaging-race-in-the-classroom/

Book review (Review)
Author(s): Cristobal Silva
Publication: American Literature
Date: 6/1/2016
URL: http://americanliterature.dukejournals.org/content/87/4/825.full.pdf+html

Book review (Review)
Author(s): Cristobal Silva
Publication: Early American Literature
Date: 6/1/2015
URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/article/584460

Book review (Review)
Author(s): Cristobal Silva
Publication: Ethnohistory
Date: 7/1/2016
URL: http://ethnohistory.dukejournals.org/content/62/2/396.full.pdf+html

Literature to 1800 (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Cristobal Silva
Publication: American Literary Scholarship
Date: 12/30/2014
URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/594552

Book review (Review)
Author(s): Cristobal Silva
Publication: Journal of American History
Date: 12/3/2016
URL: http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/content/101/3/921.full

Book review (Review)
Author(s): Cristobal Silva
Publication: Notes and Queries
Date: 1/25/2016
URL: http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/content/63/1/136.full

When a Sunburn is Never Just a Sunburn (Review)
Author(s): Cristobal Silva
Publication: Common-Place
Date: 6/1/2015
URL: http://common-place.org/book/when-a-sunburn-is-never-just-a-sunburn/

Book review (Review)
Author(s): Cristobal Silva
Publication: New England Quarterly
Date: 12/1/2014
URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/author/Chiles%2C+Katy+L

Book review (Review)
Author(s): Cristobal Silva
Publication: Journal of American Culture
Date: 3/7/2016
URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jacc.12511/full

Book review (Review)
Author(s): Cristobal Silva
Publication: CHOICE
Date: 9/1/2014
URL: http://go.galegroup.com/ps/retrieve.do?sort=DA-SORT&docType=Book+review%2C+Brief+article&tabID=T002&prodId=AONE&searchId=R1&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&contentSegment=¤tPosition=131&searchResultsType=SingleTab&inPS=true&userGroupName=tel_a_utl&docId=GALE%7CA381948178&contentSet=GALE%7CA381948178&u=tel_a_utl&authCount=1

Associated Products

Transformable Race: Surprising Metamorphoses in the Literature of Early America (Book)
Title: Transformable Race: Surprising Metamorphoses in the Literature of Early America
Author: Katy L. Chiles
Abstract: Contrasting sharply with subsequent periods, much late eighteenth-century thought conceptualized race as an external, mutable bodily condition that could change over time. Identifying how this thinking shapes and is shaped by literary culture, Transformable Race and the Literatures of Early America argues that the notion of transformable race structures how early American writers depict the production of racial identities.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com.proxy.lib.utk.edu:90/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199313501.001.0001/acprof-9780199313501
Secondary URL: http://www.amazon.com/Transformable-Race-Surprising-Metamorphoses-Literature/dp/0199313504/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1460068651&sr=8-1&keywords=transformable+race
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978-0199313501
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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