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Author:

Cohen, Lara Langer, author.

Title:

Going underground : race, space, and the subterranean in the nineteenth-century United States / Lara Langer Cohen.

Publisher:

Duke University Press,

Copyright Date:

2023

Description:

ix, 277 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Subject:

1800-1899
American literature--History and criticism.--History and criticism.
American literature--19th century--History and criticism.
African Americans--Intellectual life--19th century.
Literature and society--United States--History--19th century.
Politics and literature--United States--History--19th century.
African Americans--Race identity.
African Americans--History--19th century.
Criticism.
History.
African Americans.
African Americans--Intellectual life.
African Americans--Race identity.
American literature.
American literature--African American authors.
Literature and society.
Politics and literature.
Race relations.
United States--History--History--19th century.
United States.
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-266) and index.

Contents:

A Basement Shut Off and Forgotten during the Nineteenth Century -- The "Blackness of Darkness" in Mammoth Cave -- Early Black Radical Undergrounds -- The Underground Railroad's Undergrounds -- The Depths of Astonishment: City Mysteries and Subterranean Unknowability -- "To drop beneath the floors of the outer world": Paschal Beverly Randolph's Occult Undergrounds -- Subterranean Fire: Anarchist Visions of the Underground -- Staying Underground.

Summary:

"First popularized by newspaper coverage of the Underground Railroad in the 1840s, the underground serves as a metaphor for subversive activity that remains central to our political vocabulary. In Going Underground, Lara Langer Cohen excavates the long history of this now-familiar idea while seeking out versions of the underground that got left behind along the way. Outlining how the underground's figurative sense first took shape through the associations of literal subterranean spaces with racialized Blackness, she examines a vibrant world of nineteenth-century US subterranean literature that includes Black radical manifestos, anarchist periodicals, sensationalist exposés of the urban underworld, manuals for sex magic, and the initiation rites of secret societies. Cohen finds that the undergrounds in this literature offer sites of political possibility that exceed the familiar framework of resistance, suggesting that nineteenth-century undergrounds can inspire new modes of world-making and world-breaking for a time when this world feels increasingly untenable"-- Provided by publisher.

ISBN:

1478019484
9781478019480
1478016841
9781478016847

OCLC:

(OCoLC)1317805742

LCCN:

2022029781

Locations:

OVUX522 -- University of Iowa Libraries (Iowa City)