The Rich Earth between Us: The Intimate Grounds of Race and Sexuality in the Atlantic World, 1770-1840

by Shelby Johnson

Overview

In this theory-rich study, Shelby Johnson analyzes the works of Black and Indigenous writers in the Atlantic World, examining how their literary production informs “modes of being” that confronted violent colonial times. Johnson particularly assesses how these authors connected to places—whether real or imagined—and how those connections enabled them to make worlds in spite of the violence of slavery and settler colonialism. Johnson engages with works written in a period engulfed by the extraordinary political and social upheavals of the Age of Revolution and Indian Removal, and these texts—which include not only sermons, life writing, and periodicals but also descriptions of embodied and oral knowledge, as well as material objects—register defiance to land removal and other forms of violence.

In studying writers of color during this era, Johnson probes the histories of their lived environment and of the earth itself—its limits, its finite resources, and its metaphoric mortality—in a way that offers new insights on what it means to imagine sustainable connections to the ground on which we walk.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469677927
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	03/01/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	230
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Shelby Johnson is assistant professor of English at Oklahoma State University.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This text joins a growing conversation on the solidarities between African diasporic and Indigenous communities of the Atlantic World. The creativity, care, and deep, multifield engagement that Johnson brings to her primary sources is a model for what scholarship on this period can be.” —Greta LaFleur, Yale University

“Johnson moves fluidly through current scholarship and theoretical work to produce a deeply thoughtful and reorienting reading of the work of four prominent eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Black and Native writers. A powerful and original contribution that is very much at the heart of current conversations in the field.”—Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, Northeastern University

Editorial Reviews

“[A] beautifully written first book. . . . The Rich Earth Between Us offers an expanded understanding of intimacy through Black and Indigenous writings in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Atlantic world. The book powerfully attests to the importance of small practices of worldmaking and small moments of connection between humans and the earth, as these moments offer a vision for a decolonial future.”—Journal of the History of Sexuality

“Johnson weaves Indigenous and critical Black studies into the fabric of the environmental humanities, queer studies, and political theology, ultimately demonstrating how an interdisciplinary tapestry can map the deracination of disciplinarity itself. . . . [W]hat reading Rich Earth commands is how we can (re)think archive, text, and narration as vital components of classrooms not defined by historicity.”—Eighteenth Century Studies

“This text joins a growing conversation on the solidarities between African diasporic and Indigenous communities of the Atlantic World. The creativity, care, and deep, multifield engagement that Johnson brings to her primary sources is a model for what scholarship on this period can be.” —Greta LaFleur, Yale University

“Johnson moves fluidly through current scholarship and theoretical work to produce a deeply thoughtful and reorienting reading of the work of four prominent eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Black and Native writers. A powerful and original contribution that is very much at the heart of current conversations in the field.”—Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, Northeastern University

From the Publisher