Crossings in Nineteenth-Century American Culture

Edward Sugden is Senior Lecturer in American Literature at King’s College London. His first book is Emergent Worlds (NYU Press, 2018).

Featuring surprising stories and intriguing historical figures, Crossings challenges us to rethink nineteenth-century American culture. The era that consolidated identities of lasting political significance – from gender, race and region to the buffered self – was also an era in which these identities were frequently exceeded, confounded and evaded. A fascinating archeology for revising the identity politics of our time.

• IntroductionEdward Sugden, King’s College LondonSection 1: ElsewheresChapter 1: Material / Immaterial: Frederick Douglass and the ‘Moral Chemistry of the Universe’, 1855Cody Marrs, University of GeorgiaChapter 2: Earth / Atmosphere: The Leonid Meteor Shower, 1833Gordon Fraser, University of ManchesterChapter 3: Body / Spirit: Walt Whitman’s Hicksite Quaker Poetics, 1855Rachel Heffner-Burns, Fairfield UniversitySection 2: Excess IdentitiesChapter 4: Latinx / Confederate: Loreta Janeta Velazquez as a Cross Dressing Soldier, 1861Leigh Johnson, Marymount UniversityChapter 5: Philippines / United States: David Fagen Defects to the Filipino Army, 1899Spencer Tricker, Longwood UniversityChapter 6: White / Not-White: Robert Montgomery Bird’s Racial Transformations, 1839Hannah Lauren Murray, University of LiverpoolChapter 7: Ecology / Radical Politics: Thoreau’s Science of Civil Disobedience, 1849Michael Jonik, University of SussexSection 3: Chance EncountersChapter 8: Mexico / Britain: A History of Julia Pastrana’s Teeth, 1860-2013Marissa López, University of California, Los Angeles Chapter 9: Matanzas, Cuba / Keswick, England: Maria Gowen Brooks Visits Robert Southey, 1831Erin C. Singer, Louisiana Tech UniversityChapter 10: England / New England: A British Quaker and a Fugitive from Slavery Encounter Each Other on a Train, 1850Bridget Bennett, University of LeedsSection 4: Impossible SystemsChapter 11: Slave Labour / Wage Labour: Reading Bartleby’s Refusals, 1850Tomos Hughes, University of WarwickChapter 12: Antiquity / Modernity: An Issue of Puck Magazine, 1889Mark Storey, University of WarwickChapter 13: Democracy / State: James Fenimore Cooper on the Frontier, 1826 / 1757Cécile Roudeau, Université de ParisChapter 14: Ulster, 1785 /Pennsylvania, 1817/ Ulster, 1845: James McHenry’s Palimpsest of Anglo Settler Colonialism Jared Hickman, Johns Hopkins University