Femke Fakkeldij MA

PhD candidate

E-mail: [email protected]

Provisional title: Free Black Literary Societies and the Gendered Politics of Respectability in the Antebellum North

Title of the overarching project: In the Shadows of Slavery: Free Black Citizenship and Democracy in Antebellum America

Faculty: Humanities (Leiden University)

Supervisor: Prof.dr. Damian Pargas

Duration of appointment: January 2025 – December 2028

Contact details: [email protected]

 

This project examines the politicization of Black literary expression in the antebellum North and its relation to experiences of free Black citizenship. Central to this research are a number of Black literary societies in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York City, whose members used the production and distribution of diverse literary texts to engage with the body politic. I am particularly interested in how literary societies and their members engaged with antebellum-era respectability politics and conceptualisations of ‘respectable’ masculinity and femininity. While respectability politics has often been considered a conservative precursor to more radical forms of antebellum-era political activism, I am interested in illuminating the ways in which moral reform and self-improvement efforts — both advanced and challenged by literary societies — constituted a form of cultural resistance that made important contributions to the abolitionist movement. As such, this project seeks to assess to what extent free Black literary societies in the antebellum North advocated or resisted the gendered politics of respectability, and how this influenced their role in the broader abolitionist movement.