Nineteenth-Century Visions of Race

Justyna Fruzińska holds an MA in American Literature and a PhD in Cultural Studies from the University of Lodz, Poland, where she holds the position of Assistant Professor and teaches American literature, culture, and history. Her publications include Emerson Goes to the Movies: Individualism in Walt Disney Company's Post-1989 Animated Films (2014), as well as numerous academic articles on American popular culture, travel writing, Transcendentalism, and Polish poetry.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

The visitors

Transatlantic relations in the early 19th century

The discourse of travel writing

Chapter One: Nineteenth-Century Conceptions of Race

The beginnings of racial science

Attitudes towards blacks and Native Americans

Chapter Two: Touring the Land of the Unfree

The South, the North, and abolitionism

Objective observers

Essentialist views of race

Nineteenth-century racial hierarchies

Chapter Three: Children of the Forest, Noble and Ignoble Savages: Encounters with Native Americans

Sympathy for the oppressed

Savages noble and ignoble: the double image

Doomed to extinction

Extremes of contempt

Chapter Four: Gazing at Racialized Bodies

Seeking esthetic pleasure

The ugly, the grotesque, the animal

Performing race

Speaking for itself?

Conclusion

Index