Prison Shades and Carceral Shadows: Black Femme Liberation Geographies of the Early Twentieth Century South Restricted; Files Only

Abstract

Black writers of the early twentieth century South inherited a painful history that was all too fresh. This history placed strains on their work as it created the circumstances for the carceral surveillance and restrictions they faced in their lives. This project attributes these restrictions to the legacies of racial capitalism, which has many offshoots including chattel slavery, the prison industrial complex, and globalization. To create the West as we know it today required Indigenous genocide, chattel slavery, and multiple wars, many unwinnable, all in the service of the United States’ emergence and continuation as a World power. What the global majority produce, the West consumes and claims as its own in service of itself. In the early twentieth century, this globalization was only just getting started. What we see in the works of racialized southern writers like Jean Toomer and Georgia Douglas Johnson of this time are responses to the pressures they faced and the desires they had for something that looked and felt like freedom.

Table of Contents

1. Critical Introduction: Prison Shades and Carceral Shadows, 7

2. Black Femme Embodied Resistance to a New South Criminality, 30

3. Georgia Douglas Johnson's Carceral Poetics, 55

4. Making an Erotic Sense of Jean Toomer's Carceral Landscapes, 91

5. Conclusion: Carceral Legacies, 130

About this Dissertation

Rights statement

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	English
Degree	Ph.D.
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	History, Black Literature, American African American Studies
Stichwort	Carceral Prison Industrial Complex Black queer feminism Spatial theory
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Dr. Valerie Babb, Emory University
Committee Members	Dr. Dilek Huseyinzadegan, Emory University Dr. Meina Yates-Richard, Emory University

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