Atlantic Crossing in the Wake of Frederick Douglass

Atlantic Crossings in the Wake of Frederick Douglass takes its bearings from the Maryland-born former slave Frederick Douglass's 1845 sojourn in Ireland and Britain--a voyage that is understood in editors Mark P. Leone and Lee M. Jenkins' collection as paradigmatic of the crossings between American, African American, and Irish historical experience and culture with which the collection as a whole is concerned. In crossing the Atlantic, Douglass also completed his journey from slavery to freedom, and from political and cultural marginality into subjective and creative autonomy. Atlantic Crossings traces the stages of that journey in chapters on literature, archaeology, and spatial culture that consider both roots and routes--landscapes of New World slavery, subordination, and state-sponsored surveillance, and narratives of resistance, liberation, and intercultural exchange generated by transatlantic connectivities and the transnational transfer of ideas.