David Walker’s Appeal and Everyday Abolition

Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

Citations

Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/n296wz37g

Abstract

Titled “David Walker’s Appeal and Everyday Abolition” this thesis uses book history methodologies to reconstruct the pamphlet’s overlooked uses. Where many scholars highlight radical and revolutionary tendencies, I explore archival evidence that seems unassimilable to these critical positions. Instead, this thesis mobilizes marginalia, gift exchanges, archival acquisitions, and printing records to paint a different reception history of Walker’s Appeal. I suggest that this evidence points toward a non-sensational, ordinary side of Walker’s pamphlet. By considering the variegated “situatedness” of Walker’s Appeal, the thesis probes a larger idea of “everyday abolition.” This capacious term gathers ordinary, minor, and non-sensational abolitionist practices. “David Walker’s Appeal and Everyday Abolition” argues that ordinary practices—gifting, preservation, private reading—constitute an understudied, undertheorized, and politically significant elements of antebellum literary history.

Creator