Descripción del proyecto
Autobiografías y movilidad interamericana negra
Las autobiografías, en formas tan dispares como las narrativas de esclavos y cautividad, las memorias religiosas y los cuadernos de viaje seculares, han desempeñado una función determinante a la hora de conformar las identidades y las experiencias de los negros americanos. El proyecto interdisciplinario financiado con fondos europeos BIMAAR estudia cómo cuatro tipos principales de autobiografías trasnacionales de autores negros han abordado distintas formas de movilidad negra en el continente americano durante y tras la era de las revoluciones y hasta la guerra de Secesión estadounidense. La Universidad de Lancashire Central, sede del prestigioso Instituto de Investigación sobre el Atlántico Negro y sus grandes estudiosos de la Primera América Negra y el Atlántico Negro, es la entidad de acogida ideal para este estudio.
Objetivo
The interdisciplinary research explores the ways transnational autobiographies by black authors address different forms of black mobility in the Americas during the Age of Revolutions and its aftermath until the onset of the US American Civil War (1760-1860). During that time, large parts of the Americas gained their independence from the European colonial powers. Simultaneously, black-authored narrative texts emerged in the region. Among them, autobiographies played a key role as vehicles of asserting black selfhood and participating in societal discourses. Four major types of black life narratives developed at the time: slave narratives, Indian captivity narratives, spiritual autobiographies, and memoirs-as-travelogues. In all of them different form of (im)mobility played a defining role in shaping black identities and experiences.
The research is the first of its kind to study transnational black autobiographies from across the Americas in the Age of Revolutions with a focus the (voluntary or enforced) spatial, socio-cultural, and narrative mobilities of black people. Its objective is to produce a series of scholarly essays, to be subsequently joined into the first comprehensive study on the subject. Drawing on the theoretical and methodological approaches of Inter-American, Black Atlantic, Mobility, and Autobiography Studies, the project closes a gap in the scholarship of the Americas and the Atlantic world. Due to the aesthetic innovation and societal relevance of autobiography in the region from 1760-1860, the research will be based on a literary analysis of the major types of black Inter-American life writing of the era. In so doing, it will not only chart black contributions to autobiography but also advance the theoretical study of the genre.
Home to the renowned Institute of Black Atlantic Research and its world-class scholars of the Early Black Americas and Black Atlantic (Prof Rice, Dr Hoermann, Dr Saxon), UCLAN provides an ideal host institution.
Ámbito científico
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
MSCA-IF-EF-ST - Standard EFCoordinador
PR1 2HE Preston
Reino Unido