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Dissertation
BLACK GIRL MISSING: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MARY PRINCE AND OTHER NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERARY LIVES OF WOMEN OF COLOR
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
2026
Abstract
Appearing in London in 1831, The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Written by Herself, is the first narrative ever published in English by a Black woman. Mary Prince was born into slavery in Bermuda around 1788, and she lived on various Caribbean islands before escaping to “freedom” in London. Despite her History being the foundational text of a tradition of Black women’s autobiographical writing in English, Prince has remained on the margins of British literary study. Astonishingly, after the publication of her work, she simply vanished from the historical record. This dissertation takes Prince as its central thread, investigating her disappearance and that of other women of color, both historical and fictional, during the broader Romantic period, an era celebrated as the age of “Man” for its emancipation rhetoric, poetic genius, and philosophical exploration of human potential. This dissertation contends that the very definition of what it means to be human during this time was constructed upon the systematic erasure of Black women. Using an interdisciplinary Black feminist methodology, this project combines the frameworks of Sylvia Wynter, Christina Sharpe, Saidiya Hartman, Katherine McKittrick, Hortense Spillers, Zakkiyah Iman Jackson, and others to “undiscipline” traditional Romantic literary study. Through critical fabulation, plantation rhetorics, hieroglyphics of the flesh, and Black joy as resistance, canonical texts are reevaluated alongside Prince’s narrative to trace the ghostly, unmapped presence of Black women across the archive.
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Details
- Title
- BLACK GIRL MISSING: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MARY PRINCE AND OTHER NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERARY LIVES OF WOMEN OF COLOR
- Creators
- Christel Woods
- Contributors
- Dr. Debbie Lee (Advisor)Dr. Pam Thoma (Committee Member)Dr. Peter Chilson (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Department of English
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 136
- Identifiers
- 99901394204401842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation