Print and the Path to African American Self-Determination in the Nineteenth Century

This dissertation analyzes how nineteenth-century African American authors used printpractices and writing strategies to actualize objectives related to the project of self-determination. These objectives include nineteenth-century historical movements like abolitionism and emigration as well as cultural values and behaviors promoted by authors who believed that a spirit of activism, philanthropy, debate, and community engagement would be critical to individuals invested in African American self-determination. I argue that in theorizing social and political objectives aimed at organizing and defining a national African American community, nineteenth-century Black authors also theorized about the purpose of print and the writing and publishing strategies that structure it. Further, I assert that this conception of print as a necessary means of advancement produced a range of unacknowledged approaches to writing and publishing that should inform the way critics read and archive nineteenth-century Black print. The central claim of my project is that the archive of canonized African American literature is largely made up of activist-authors–or authors who produced both nonliterary and literary writing. As such, my project builds on contemporary scholarship about the multi-generic nature of Black print to revisit three authors central to the nineteenth-century African American literary canon and read their oeuvres with a holistic approach. I consider the ways multiple works by a single author illustrate a fluid relationship between literary and nonliterary writing and evaluate aspects of literary writing, including genres and techniques associated with fiction, alongside those associated with nonfiction. I also consider how each author’s literary and nonliterary writings reflect different approaches toward similar aims regarding the path to self- determination. This intertextual approach both decenters the novel in the study of African American literature and reframes canonical literary authors as activist-authors whose work is the aggregate of a lifelong commitment to community