The dress and the colonial body in transatlantic texts, 1767-1853

Permanent URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20214663
Title:
The dress and the colonial body in transatlantic texts, 1767-1853
Creator:
Runyan, Amanda Blair (Author)
Contributor:
Aljoe, Nicole N. (Advisor)
Maddock Dillon, Elizabeth (Committee member)
Green, Laura (Committee member)
Language:
English
Publisher:
Boston, Massachusetts : Northeastern University, 2016
Date Accepted:
August 2016
Date Awarded:
August 2016
Type of resource:
Text
Genre:
Dissertations
Format:
electronic
Digital origin:
born digital
Abstract/Description:
My dissertation, "The Dress and the Colonial Body in Transatlantic Texts, 1767-1853," argues that the appearance and presentation of women in colonial spaces is used to make colonizing powers visually explicit. This project analyzes the presentation of colonial bodies through the garment of the dress, a piece of clothing which both constructs and reifies gender. I argue that colonial subjects are visually defined, and racial categories are both constructed and stabilized, through the garment of the dress. Eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century literature is particularly relevant for an analysis of dress because emerging fashions or habits of dress are directly linked to social and economic events in the larger Atlantic world. The colonization of the new world, as well as the implementation of the institution of slavery, are both political realities which sought to stabilize the categories of gender and race by restricting or legislating the clothing practices of colonized people. Tracing sartorial depictions through a number of visual and textual mediums, I begin by reading narratives of Pocahontas and the novel The Female American (1767). Other chapters read the novel A Woman of Color: A Tale (1808) depicting a biracial Jamaican woman visiting London, and the textile osnaburg and the novel Clotel; or, The President's Daughter (1853). Through an analysis of literary texts and archival materials, I reveal the dress and dresses of colonial women as performative constructions and attempted stabilizations of the categories of gender and race that highlight the extension of the colonial project to the body of the colonial subject.
Subjects and keywords:
American
Caribbean
Colonialism
dress
fashion
literature
Pocahontas, -1617 -- Biography -- Criticism and interpretation
Brown, William Wells, 1814?-1884 -- Criticism and interpretation
Jefferson, Thomas, 1743-1826 -- Criticism and interpretation
Winkfield, Unca Eliza -- Criticism and interpretation
Clothing and dress in literature
Clothing and dress -- United States -- History
Clothing and dress -- Jamaica -- History
Women colonists -- United States -- Social conditions
Women colonists -- Jamaica -- Social conditions
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17760/D20214663
Permanent Link:
http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20214663
Use and reproduction:
In Copyright: This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the right-holder(s). (http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/)
Copyright restrictions may apply.

Downloads