Touching Liberty

"Extremely well researched, finely nuanced, and clearly written. . . . Her analyses are stunning. . . . This study juxtaposes consideration of noncanonical works with canonical works to produce remarkable insights about the politics of the body during an intensely political period of the nineteenth century."--Barbara Christian, author of Black Women Novelists "A superb contribution . . . [and] highly important study that will make its mark on the fields of American literary and cultural studies. In addition, Sánchez-Eppler performs an extremely valuable political service in exposing the 'asymmetries' between white and Black women in feminist-abolitionist discourse and the manner in which 'moments of identification' become 'acts of appropriation.' This issue continues to be relevant to feminists today. Her extension of this insight to Whitman's 'poetics of merger' is also provocative, adding another dimension to the cautionary enterprise of assessing the limitations of white radicalism."--Carolyn L. Karcher, editor of Lydia Maria Child's "Hobomok" and Other Writings on Indians "This book is an insightful, lucid, and persuasive discussion of the tension between the abstract language of the state and the disruptive discourses of abolitionism and feminism. It promises to have a profound impact upon the ways in which teachers, scholars, students, and general readers conceptualize nineteenth-century U.S. literature and culture."--Valerie Smith, author of Self-Discovery and Authority in Afro-American Narrative