English
St. John's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Abolition’s Public Sphere
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis, MN
2003, 331 pages
Abolition’s Public Sphere examines the massive publicity
campaign undertaken by the New England abolition movement on behalf
of the enslaved. This campaign sought to enlist every member of
society, slaves as well as children, in a political discussion of
American slaveholding policy and the nature of national power. But
it was also intended to stir memories of past movements for
democracy, such as the American Revolution, and transform every
abolitionist into a latter-day revolutionary. William Lloyd
Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Henry Thoreau emerge in a
striking new light in this book.
“Fanuzzi’s theoriestically informed genealogy of 19th century
[American] civic culture promises to become required reading in . .
. . courses in American studies and African-American
studies.”
—Donald Pease, Dartmouth College