商品簡介
Exposes the influential work of a group of black artists to confront and refute scientific racism.
Traversing the archives of early African American literature, performance, and visual culture, Fugitive Science chronicles a little-known story about race and science in America. While scientific racism (the use of these pseudosciences to justify racist practices) has been well-documented, there was also a counter-movement of African Americans who worked to refute these claims.
Far from rejecting science, these figures were careful readers of antebellum science who linked diverse fields—from astronomy to physiology—to both on-the-ground activism and more speculative forms of knowledge creation. Routinely excluded from institutions of scientific learning and training, they transformed cultural spaces like the page, the stage, the parlor, and even the pulpit into laboratories of knowledge and experimentation. From the recovery of neglected figures like Robert Benjamin Lewis, Hosea Easton, and Sarah Mapps Douglass, to new accounts of Martin Delany, Henry Box Brown, and Frederick Douglass, Fugitive Science makes natural science central to how we understand the origins and development of African American literature and culture.
This is a distinct and unique book with perspectives that will spark interest from anyone wishing to learn more on race and society.
