“Look!! Look!!! at This!!!!”: The Radical Typography of David Walker's Appeal

PMLA ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 126 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcy J. Dinius
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Literary Canon ◽  
The World ◽  
Printed Word

From the first publication of David Walker's Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World in 1829 through its incorporation into the contemporary literary canon, readers have recognized it as a fiery indictment of slavery and of the contradictions in Christianity and in the United States' founding. Yet the striking typography of Walker's Appeal has become invisible in our critical focus on the text's relation to African American oratory and even in considerations of the pamphlet's significance in early black print culture. An analysis of this graphic text reveals how it materially registers Walker's impassioned voice and argument and how it visually directs readers to voice his call to the illiterate. Walker attempts to resolve the opposition of the spoken and the printed word by exploiting his text's typography.

Houses Divided

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas P. Volkman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Local Phenomenon ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Border State

This work argues that congregational and local denominational schisms among Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians in the border state of Missouri before, during, and after the Civil War were central to the crisis of the Union, Civil War, and Reconstruction. Employing an array of approaches that examine these ecclesiastical fractures beyond the customary antebellum temporal scope of analysis, and as a local phenomenon, this study maintains that the schisms were interlinked religious, sociocultural, legal, and political developments rife with implications for the transformation of evangelicalism and the United States in that period and to the end of Reconstruction. The evangelical disruptions in Missouri were grounded in divergent moral and political understandings of slavery, abolitionism, secession, and disloyalty. Publicly articulated by factional litigation over church property and a combative evangelical print culture, the schisms were complicated by race, class, and gender dynamics that arrayed the contending interests of white middle-class women and men, rural churchgoers, and African American congregants. These ruptures forged antagonistic northern and southern evangelical worldviews that increased antebellum sectarian strife and violence, energized the notorious guerrilla conflict that gripped Missouri through the Civil War, and fueled postwar vigilantism between opponents and proponents of emancipation. As such, the schisms produced the intertwined religious, legal, and constitutional controversies that shaped pro- and antislavery evangelical contention before 1861, wartime Radical rule, and the rise and fall of Reconstruction.

Can We Expect More than Symbolic Support?

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 6-11
Author(s):  
Bereket Habte Selassie
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Values ◽  
American Presidency ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World

When I think about the extraordinary writing and speaking phenomenon by the name of Barack Obama, who also happens to be the President of the United States of America, the most powerful country in the world, I can't help asking myself, what can he do for Africa? I ask this not only because he is a son of Africa, but also because I hear in his speeches the words of a man deeply committed to human values, and therefore concerned with the predicament of Africa's people in this age of globalization.As the first African American elected to the American presidency, Obama represents an extraordinary symbolic change in American politics. No one can underestimate the symbolic significance of his election. Nor should it be considered purely a matter of symbolism; a changing of the guard at the top necessarily involves—or should involve—implications of substantive change. There is the rub—can we expect substantive change of any significance from his election, given the nature and structure of American politics and society?In connection with that question it is fair to ask: what does the Age of Obama portend for Africa? Two related questions arise concerning this: first, what should Obama do for Africa, and second, what can he do for Africa? As to the first question, what Obama should do for Africa is linked to Africa's need; and we can spend a whole day talking about that and not exhaust it. On the basis of Obama's speeches, including especially his Accra speech of July 11, 2009, and our own sense of Africa's needs, I offer three primary talking points that embrace a set of values or goals upon which all government systems should be based. The first is peace and stability, the second is sustainable economic development and social justice, and the third is democracy and good governance—not necessarily in that order.

scholarly journals African Canadian Anti-Discrimination Activism and the Transnational Civil Rights Movement, 1945–1965

2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 386-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosanne Waters
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Canadian History ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Rights History ◽  
African Canadian

Several recent historical works have challenged interpretations of the civil rights movement in the United States as a strictly domestic story by considering its connections to anti-racist struggles around the world. Adding a Canadian dimension to this approach, this article considers linkages between African Canadian anti-discrimination activism in the 1950s and early 1960s and African American civil rights organizing. It argues that Canadian anti-discrimination activists were interested in and influenced by the American movement. They followed American civil rights campaigns, adapted relevant ideas, and leveraged the prominent American example when pressing for change in their own country. African Canadian activists and organizations also impacted the American movement through financial and moral support. This article contributes to the study of African Canadian history, Canadian human rights history, and the American civil rights movement by emphasizing the local origins of anti-discrimination activism in Canada, while also arguing that such efforts are best understood when contextualized within a broader period of intensive global anti-racist activism that transcended national borders.

scholarly journals Anti-Racist Pedagogy in the Canonization of Toni Morrison

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 15-24
Author(s):  
Min Pun
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Interdisciplinary Studies ◽  
Literary Canon ◽  
American Schools

The paper aims to examine the anti-racist approach in pedagogy in relation to the issues of representations of African Americans in American schools, curricula, and literary canon. It has considered anti-racist pedagogy as a correct approach to creating a truly democratic society in a racist society like the United States of America. In order to address these issues, Toni Morrison has been considered the most successful African American writer who has attained canonical status within the mainstream of both African American and American literature. The paper has, thus, raised some of the vital issues related to the representations of African Americans in American schools, curricula, and the literary canons.Crossing the Border: International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 5(2) 2017: 15-24

Early African American Print Culture

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Gardner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
The North ◽  
Black Life ◽  
Maria Stewart

Not until the end of the 20th century did scholars begin to look at early African American print culture in the depth it deserves. A story painfully intertwined with the transatlantic slave system and racism, early black print engagement combined, from its beginnings, responses to white aggression and a powerful set of individual and communal desires to read about, record, and, via print, share truths of black life in the United States. Some of the first creators of black print in the United States, from the authors of the earliest slave narratives to poet Phillis Wheatley, had to think through questions of individual and communal identity vis-à-vis emerging American socio-political structures and find ways to ensure control over their own voices in a white-dominated culture that tried to exclude, use, or abuse those voices. But early black print culture is not simply the story of a single genre like the slave narrative or of exceptional individuals like Wheatley. Rather, it is also the story of organizational print tied to churches, conventions, and activist groups. It is as well the story of a diverse range of modes, from the rich pamphleteering tradition (perhaps most excitingly expressed by David Walker) to early black periodicals like those edited by Samuel Cornish and Philip Bell. Especially after 1830, it also became the story of a range of black women (from Maria Stewart and Jarena Lee to Frances Ellen Watkins Harper), of African Americans across the North (and occasionally in the midst of the slave South), and of an increasing number of formats, genres, and approaches. And it became a story of how black activists might interact (in print and beyond) with white antislavery activists, recognizing both shared and different goals and philosophies as they attempted to fight not only for emancipation but for broader civil rights.

The World Is Watching: Polaroid and South Africa

2006 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 520-549 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric J. Morgan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
African American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
The World ◽  
White Minority

This article examines the Polaroid Corporation’s “experiment” in South Africa during the 1970s, which began after African American workers pressured the company to pull its operations out of South Africa in protest of the white minority government’s apartheid policies. It argues that Polaroid’s initiatives, little studied until now, led other American companies to question their presence in South Africa and inspired both student divestment movements at Harvard and other colleges and universities and the efforts of Leon Sullivan, whose 1977 “Sullivan Principles” urged American companies to treat their workers in South Africa as they would treat their counterparts in the United States in an effort to battle racism and apartheid. Despite Polaroid’s efforts, engagement with South Africa and apartheid proved futile, which initiated a larger movement to completely disengage from South Africa.

Sex Differences in Mass Media Preferences Across Four Asian Countries

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 186-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malini Ratnasingam ◽  
Lee Ellis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Sex Differences ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Female Students ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Evolutionary Explanation ◽  
Asian Countries ◽  
The World ◽  
Media Preferences

Background. Nearly all of the research on sex differences in mass media utilization has been based on samples from the United States and a few other Western countries. Aim. The present study examines sex differences in mass media utilization in four Asian countries (Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, and Singapore). Methods. College students self-reported the frequency with which they accessed the following five mass media outlets: television dramas, televised news and documentaries, music, newspapers and magazines, and the Internet. Results. Two significant sex differences were found when participants from the four countries were considered as a whole: Women watched television dramas more than did men; and in Japan, female students listened to music more than did their male counterparts. Limitations. A wider array of mass media outlets could have been explored. Conclusions. Findings were largely consistent with results from studies conducted elsewhere in the world, particularly regarding sex differences in television drama viewing. A neurohormonal evolutionary explanation is offered for the basic findings.

Sandra Ramos Revisited

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 32-54
Author(s):  
Silvia Spitta
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Graphic Arts ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The World ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Political Choices ◽  
The Rich

Sandra Ramos (b. 1969) is one of the few artists to reflect critically on both sides of the Cuban di-lemma, fully embodying the etymological origins of the word in ancient Greek: di-, meaning twice, and lemma, denoting a form of argument involving a choice between equally unfavorable alternatives. Throughout her works she shines a light on the dilemmas faced by Cubans whether in Cuba or the United States, underlining the bad personal and political choices people face in both countries. During the hard 1990s, while still in Havana, the artist focused on the traumatic one-way journey into exile by thousands, as well as the experience of profound abandonment experienced by those who were left behind on the island. Today she lives in Miami and operates a studio there as well as one in Havana. Her initial disorientation in the USA has morphed into an acerbic representation and critique of the current administration and a deep concern with the environmental collapse we face. A buffoonlike Trumpito has joined el Bobo de Abela and Liborio in her gallery of comic characters derived from the rich Cuban graphic arts tradition where she was formed. While Cuba is now represented as a rotten cake with menacing flies hovering over it ready to pounce, a bombastic Trumpito marches across the world stage, trampling everything underfoot, a dollar sign for a face.

The Unquiet Frontier

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakub J. Grygiel ◽  
A. Wess Mitchell ◽  
Jakub J. Grygiel ◽  
A. Wess Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Global Order ◽  
American Power ◽  
Alliance Networks ◽  
Effective Strategies ◽  
The World ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Critical Regions

From the Baltic to the South China Sea, newly assertive authoritarian states sense an opportunity to resurrect old empires or build new ones at America's expense. Hoping that U.S. decline is real, nations such as Russia, Iran, and China are testing Washington's resolve by targeting vulnerable allies at the frontiers of American power. This book explains why the United States needs a new grand strategy that uses strong frontier alliance networks to raise the costs of military aggression in the new century. The book describes the aggressive methods which rival nations are using to test American power in strategically critical regions throughout the world. It shows how rising and revisionist powers are putting pressure on our frontier allies—countries like Poland, Israel, and Taiwan—to gauge our leaders' commitment to upholding the American-led global order. To cope with these dangerous dynamics, nervous U.S. allies are diversifying their national-security “menu cards” by beefing up their militaries or even aligning with their aggressors. The book reveals how numerous would-be great powers use an arsenal of asymmetric techniques to probe and sift American strength across several regions simultaneously, and how rivals and allies alike are learning from America's management of increasingly interlinked global crises to hone effective strategies of their own. The book demonstrates why the United States must strengthen the international order that has provided greater benefits to the world than any in history.

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