marcus wood | University of Sussex (original) (raw)

Papers by marcus wood

1976; Kevin Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton 1586–1631: History and Politics in Early Modern England, Ox... more 1976; Kevin Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton 1586–1631: History and Politics in Early Modern England, Oxford, 1979; Graham Parry, Trophies of Time: English Antiquarians of the Seventeenth Century, Oxford, 1995. 3 D. R. Woolf, The Idea of History in Early Stuart England: Erudition, Ideology and ‘the Light of Truth’ from the Accession of James I to the Civil War, Toronto, 1990. 4 D. R. Woolf, Reading History in Early Modern England, Cambridge, 2001. 5 D. R. Woolf, ‘A Feminine Past? Gender, Genre and Historical Knowledge in England, 1500–1800’, American Historical Review 102: 3, 1997, pp. 645–79. 6 Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500–1700, Oxford, 2000, chap. 4; Keith Thomas, The Perception of the Past in Early Modern England, The Creighton Lecture 1983, London, 1984. 7 Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, 2 vols in 1, Cambridge, 1979; Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: the Technologizing of the Word, London and New York, 1982. 8 Adrian Johns,Th...

Slavery & Abolition, 2011

the “picture-making” process. I was also surprised – because I wanted to read more – at the relat... more the “picture-making” process. I was also surprised – because I wanted to read more – at the relatively short length of this collection given Lee’s clear-cut statement that Douglass is “the most important black writer of the nineteenth century” (9). Thus, while the collection succeeds impressively in its aim “to examine as comprehensively as possible Douglass’s diverse achievements” as articulated by Lee, the volume would have benefited from including a more extensive examination of Douglass the historian, Douglass the essayist, Douglass the political statesman, Douglass the transatlantic writer and performer and also, Douglass the visual arts theorist (1). A stellar achievement and groundbreaking contribution to knowledge, my only appeal would be for a second volume which would make it possible not only to extrapolate yet further from Frederick Douglass’s “interdisciplinary approach” but also from his interdisciplinary visual and textual archive.

Using Historic Williamsburg as a focus the chapter considers the representation of African Americ... more Using Historic Williamsburg as a focus the chapter considers the representation of African Americans within the American heritage industries. Based on extensive interviews with participants in Williamsburg's African American Historical Re-enactment Programmes the analysis reveals the censorship and repression of African Americans within the forms of history and memory sanctioned by American museums and historical sites connected to the memory of slavery. The chapter ends by speculating on the limits of slavery, memory and recoverability in the 21st century.

Slavery & Abolition, 2018

The cowrie shell, famous the world over for its simple beauty, has for centuries been used as an ... more The cowrie shell, famous the world over for its simple beauty, has for centuries been used as an item of personal decoration, as jewelry, and as an accessory in hairstyles and clothing. Today, there are fashion companies specializing in cowries, offering a range of stylish items, all incorporating cowrie shells as part of their commercial wares. Metal and leather bracelets, necklaces, pendants, hair accessories, earrings, baskets and bowls, musical instruments, rings-even denim jeans-all come bedecked with cowrie shells. You can even buy large bags of cut and polished cowrie shells for personal adaptation. 1 Cowrie shells and their related fashions are aimed primarily at the African-American market, with companies often promoting their products to people of African descent through an appeal to an African past. For some, the cowrie has even become a symbol of African identity and an imagined African history. Wearing or sporting a cowrie shell is not only a fashion statement but also an affirmation of personal identity. Sometimes this simple shell is promoted by some far-fetched claims: a shell rooted in an Africa shrouded in myth and legend, with links to the world of spirits, beliefs-and with tantalizing hints of prosperity and personal health.

The chapter explores the distortions and fictions which America’s memory industries have develope... more The chapter explores the distortions and fictions which America’s memory industries have developed around Frederick Douglass. The sinister processes of valorization and matyrological fetishisation which have been used to disguise and efface American’s slave inheritance via a superscription of white patriarchal triumphalism jump out of this text as the lurid monstrosities they are. The demonstrates how an equal and opposite semiotics of distortion has also been catastrophically laid upon the cultural construction of Frederick Douglass. Douglass is dragged out of the virtual filth which threatens to turn him into slavery’s most tragic ‘oreo’

The Oxford Handbook of the African American Slave Narrative, 2014

First comprehensive analysis of the operation of personal portaiture via photogrphy, lithograph a... more First comprehensive analysis of the operation of personal portaiture via photogrphy, lithograph and engraving in African American Slave Narrative.

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2014

Lumen: Selected Proceedings from the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 1997

Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y ... more Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d'utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l'

Romanticism on the Net, 1999

... part of the sex, would be less shocking, but to accompany him to the altar, to become ... nas... more ... part of the sex, would be less shocking, but to accompany him to the altar, to become ... nascent Global capitalism in the form of West and East India monopolies, as constituting a system of ... He saw the British military force as the sacrifice of white youths in the cause of perpetuating ...

Writing the History of Slavery

The first comparative analysis of the construction of Africa within the cultural memory of Africa... more The first comparative analysis of the construction of Africa within the cultural memory of African Americans and Afro Brazilians. The analysis is focused on a close reading of two key texts: Saidiya Hartman’s 'Lose Your Mother' and Gilberto Gil, 'Pierre Verger mensangeiro entre Dois Mundos'.

Free Print and Non-Commercial Publishing since 1700

The greatest cultural historian of beads Lydia Sciama dramatically instructs us that: ‘One cannot... more The greatest cultural historian of beads Lydia Sciama dramatically instructs us that: ‘One cannot over-emphasise the importance of glass beads in the European colonization of a vast portion of the inhabited world.’ True words, and yet beads have been and continue to be shamefully and wilfully neglected within international slavery studies. Beads, whether of African, Asian or European manufacture remain peripheral, scarcely studied and hardly seen, let alone recognised as a unifying cultural entity within slavery studies, and indeed within the officially sanctioned sites for the memory of slavery. This chapter teaches us that how a culture now moves around beads and memory can tell you a lot about its creative health, its perceptual vigour, its aesthetic virtue, its artistic democracy, and its ability to understand slave aesthetics and art.

The Black Butterfly focuses on the slavery writings of three of Brazil's literary giants-Mach... more The Black Butterfly focuses on the slavery writings of three of Brazil's literary giants-Machado de Assis, Castro Alves, and Euclides da Cunha. These authors wrote in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as Brazil moved into and then through the 1888 abolition of slavery. Assis was Brazil's most experimental novelist; Alves was a Romantic poet with passionate liberationist politics, popularly known as "the poet of the slaves"; and da Cunha is known for the masterpiece Os Sertoes (The Backlands), a work of genius that remains strangely neglected in the scholarship of transatlantic slavery. Wood finds that all three writers responded to the memory of slavery in ways that departed from their counterparts in Europe and North America, where emancipation has typically been depicted as a moment of closure. He ends by setting up a wider literary context for his core authors by introducing a comparative study of their great literary abolitionist predecessors L...