Discourses of Slavery and Abolition brings together for the first time the most important strands of current thinking on the relationship between slavery and categories of writing, oratory and visual culture in the 'long' Eighteenth-century. The book begins by examining writing about slavery and race by both philosophers and by authors such as Aphra Behn. It considers self-representation in the works of Ignatius Sancho, Olaudah Equiano, James Williams and Mary Prince. The final section reads literary and cultural texts associated with the abolition movements of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, moving beyond traditional accounts of the documents of that movement to show the importance of religious writing, children's literature and the relationship between art and abolition.

This book analyzes textual representations of Jamaican slave women in three contexts--motherhood, intimate relationships, and work--in both pro- and antislavery writings. Altink examines how British abolitionists and pro-slavery activists represented the slave women to their audiences and explains not only the purposes that these representations served, but also their effects on slave women’s lives.

"Originating in a conference organised in 2007 by the Centre for the Reception of Greece and Rome at Royal Holloway, University of London, and held at the British Library ... this accessible volume offers a pathbreaking study of the role played by the interpreters of ancient Greek and roman texts in the debates over the abolition of slavery. Focusing on Britain, North America, the Caribbean, and South Africa from the late 17th century, the essays examine the arguments of critics and defenders of slavery and legacy of slavery, in later periods." --Book jacket.

Material things mattered immensely to those who engaged in daily struggles over the character and future of slavery and to those who subsequently contested the meanings of freedom in the post-emancipation Caribbean. Throughout the history of slavery, objects and places were significant to different groups of people, from the opulent master class to enslaved field hands as well as to other groups, including maroons, free people of colour and missionaries, all of who shared the lived environments of Caribbean plantation colonies. By exploring the rich material world inhabited by these people, this book offers new ways of seeing history from below, of linking localised experiences with global transformations and connecting deeply personal lived realities with larger epochal events that defined the history of slavery and its abolition in the British Caribbean. This book was originally published as a special issue of Slavery & Abolition.

This exploration of slavery from the Ottoman viewpoint is based on extensive research in British and Turkish archives and offers rich, original, and important insights into Ottoman life and thought.

Political Poetry as Discourse examines the works of the political poets John Greenleaf Whittier and Ebenezer Elliott, drawing comparisons to contemporary hip hoppers who take their words from local newspapers and other discursive sources that they read, hear, and observe. Local presses and news vehicles stand as cultural material forms that supply poets with words, particularly words that congeal into patterns of language, allowing the creation of a poetic discourse. As readers of these poets apply techniques and theories of discourse analysis, they reveal how poets borrow, lift, hijack, or resituate words from one or more different genres to use as tools of political change. Leonard engages with the critical toolboxes of content analysis, semiosis, and deconstruction to demonstrate how to critically investigate and interrogate the images, sounds and words not just of politically engaged poets, but also of any disseminator of culture and news. Moving beyond theory into praxis, this book becomes a model of its own transgressive premise by thinking, analyzing, writing, and teaching against the grain. Its focus on language as unbounded discourse makes this book a relevant and insightful demonstration in democratic pedagogy and in teaching for transformation.

Antiracist Discourse in Brazil: From Abolition to Affirmative Action follows Teun A. van Dijk’s earlier studies on racist discourse in Europe, the USA, and Latin America. This book focuses on antiracist discourse, focusing on the history of the discourse against slavery and racism and in favor of abolition and affirmative action in Brazil. After a theoretical chapter on antiracism and antiracist discourse, the author studies Jesuit texts of the 17th and 18th century criticizing the abuses against slaves and the texts of black and white writers in the 19th century advocating abolition. The author analyzes discourses of 20th century scholars, journalists, and activists who explicitly combat prevalent international eugenicist and racist ideologies as well as post-abolition discrimination of black people all while challenging the dominant myth of Brazil as a ‘racial democracy.’ After the historical study of these antiracist discourses, this book offers a detailed case study of contemporary debates on affirmative action in Brazilian parliament.