Abolition and the Arts

Abolition and American Literature: A Bibliography
Compiled by Professor Robert Smith

Slave Narratives

Crafts, Hannah. The Bondwoman’s Narrative. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (ed). London: Virago, 2002.

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. In The Classic Slave Narratives, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (ed). 1845. New York: Penguin Books, 1987.

Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. In The Classic Slave Narratives, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (ed). 1789. New York: Penguin Books, 1987.

Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the life of a slave girl. In The Classic Slave Narratives, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (ed). 1861. New York: Penguin Books, 1987.

Prince, Mary. The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave. In The Classic Slave Narratives, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (ed) 1831. New York: Penguin Books, 1987.

Washington, Booker T.. Up from Slavery. c1901. Norton, 1995.

Wilson, Harriet. Our Nig. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. (ed) 1859. London: Allison & Busby, 1984.

Secondary Sources on Slavery/Literature

Andrews, William. To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760-1865. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986.

Andrews, William L., and Gates Jr., Henry Louis, eds. Slave Narratives. New York: Library of America, 2000.

Bell, Bernard. The Afro-American Novel and its tradition. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987.

Bender, Thomas, ed. The Antislavery Debate: Capitalism and Abolitionism as a Problem in Historical Interpretation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.

Blackburn, Robin. The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern – 1492- 1800. Blackwells, 1997.

Boime, Albert. The Art of Exclusion: Representing Blacks in the Nineteenth Century. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Press, 1990.

Brown, William Wells. Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter. A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States. London, 1853.

De Rosa, Deborah C. Domestic Abolitionism and Juvenile Literature, 1830- 1865. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003.

Duberman, Martin B., ed. The Antislavery Vanguard: New Essays on the Abolitionists. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965.

Faulkner, Carol. Lucretia Mott’s Heresy: Abolition and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.

Franklin, John Hope. From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans. New York, Knopf, 1988.

Gates, Henry Louis Jr.. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Gates, Henry Louis Jr., and Charles T. Davis. The Slave’s Narrative. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Gates, Henry Louis Jr., and Carl Pedersen (eds). Black Imagination and the Middle Passage. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993.

Goddu, Teresa A. “The Slave Narrative as Material Text.” In The Oxford Handbook of the African American Slave Narrative, edited by John Ernest, p. 149-164. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Graham, Maryemma (ed). The Cambridge Companion to the African American Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Hedrick, Joan D. Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

— , ed. The Oxford Harriet Beecher Stowe Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Karcher, Carolyn L. “Stowe and the Literature of Social Change.” In The Cambridge Companion to Harriet Beecher Stowe, p. 203-218. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

McDowell, Deborah E. and Arnold Rampersad (eds). Slavery and the Literary Imagination. Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press, 1989.

Morrison, Toni. “Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature,” Michigan Quarterly Review 28 (Winter 1989): 1-34.

Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1992.

Stepto, Robert B.. From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative. 1979. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991.

Stern, Julia. “Excavating Genre in Our Nig”, American Literature 67 (September 1995): 439- 466.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Boston, 1853.

— . Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp. Boston, 1856.

— . Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly. 2 vols. Boston, 1852.

Thomas, Hugh. The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870. London: Picador, 1997.

Williams, Eric. Capitalism & Slavery. 1942. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.

Contemporary Abolition Sources

Abolition Collective. “Our Evolving Mission and Goals.” Abolition Collective, https://www.collectiveforaboliton.org/our-mission.

Akbar, Amna, “How Defund and Disband Became the Demands.” New York Review of Books, June 15, 2020, https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/06/15/how-defund-and-disband- became-the-demands/.

Akbar, Amna. “An Abolitionist Horizon for Police (Reform)” (August 10, 2020). California Law Review, Vol. 108, No. 6, 2020,. Available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=3670952.

____. “The Left is Remaking the World.” The New York Times, July 11, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/11/opinion/sunday/defund-police-cancel- rent.html?searchResultPosition=1.

Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press, 2010.

Baldwin, James. Collected Essays. New York: Library of America, 1998.

Berger, Dan, Mariame Kaba, and David Stein. “What Abolitionists Do.” Jacobin, Aug. 24, 2017, available at https://perma.cc/K959-9FF5.

Childs, Dennis. Slaves of the State: Black Incarceration from the Chain Gang to the Penitentiary. University of Minnesota Press, 2015.

Critical Resistance. “Abolish Policing.” Critical Resistance. https://criticalresistance.org/abolish- policing/.

Critical Resistance. Reformist reforms vs. abolitionist steps in policing. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59ead8f9692ebee25b72f17f/t/5b65cd5875 8d46d34254f22c/1533398363539/CR_NoCops_reform_vs_abolition_CRside.pdf.

Davis, Angela. Abolition Democracy: Beyond Prison, Torture, and Empire. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005.

Davis, Angela. Are Prisons Obsolete? New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003.

Douglass, Frederick. “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” Oration at Rochester, July 5, 1852.

Du Bois, W.E.B. Darkwater: Voices From Within the Veil.  New York: Dover, 1999.

Franke, Katherine. Repair: Redeeming the Promise of Abolition. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2019.

Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, and Opposition in Globalizing California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

Gilmore, Ruth Wilson, and Craig Gilmore. “Restating the Obvious,” in Indefensible Space: The Architecture of the National Insecurity State. Ed. Michael Sorkin. New York: Routledge, 2007.

Hasbrouck, Brandon. “Abolishing Racist Policing With the Thirteenth Amendment.” UCLA Law Review 68 (July 2020), https://www.uclalawreview.org/abolishing-racist-policing-with- the-thirteenth-amendment/.

Kaba, Mariame. “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police. Because reform won’t happen.” New York Times, June 12, 2020, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund- police.html.

Kaba, Mariame. We Do This ‘Til We Free Us. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2021.

Kushner, Rachel. “Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind.” New York Times Magazine, April 17, 2019, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/magazine/prison-abolition-ruth-wilson- gilmore.html.

McLeod, Allegra. “Envisioning Abolition Democracy.” Harvard Law Review 132, no. 6 (2019): 1613-1649.  https://harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/1613- 1649_Online.pdf.

Purnell, Derecka. “What Does Police Abolition Mean?” Boston Review, August 23, 2017, available at https://bostonreview.net/law-justice/derecka-purnell-what-does-police- abolition-mean.

Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2015.

Juana Summers, “Democrats Unveil Legislation To Abolish The Federal Death Penalty,” NPR, Trujillo, Josmar. “No BackSpace: The Case for Abolishing the Police,” City Limits, August 16, 2016, https://citylimits.org/2016/08/16/no-backspace-the-case-for-abolishing-the-police/.Vitale, Alex S. The End of Policing. New York: Verso, 2017.

Abolition and the Visual Arts: Literature Guide
Compiled by Gregory Gilbert, Professor of Art History – Convenor, Abolition and the Arts Lab

Representations of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the 18th and 19th Centuries

Arabindan-Kesson, Anna. Black Bodies, White Gold: Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World. Durham: Duke University Press, 2021.

Bindman, David, and Henry Louis Gates Jr. The Image of the Black in Western Art: Part 3, The Eighteenth Century. Vol. III. Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press, 2011.

Boime, Albert. The Art of Exclusion: Representing Blacks in the Nineteenth Century. London: Thames and Hudson, 1990.

Kriz, Kay Dian. Slavery, Sugar, and the Culture of Refinement: Picturing the British West Indies, 1700-1840. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.

Thomas, Sarah. Witnessing Slavery: Art and Travel in the Age of Abolition. London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2019.

Slavery and Abolitionism in 19th Century European Art

Alhadeff, Albert, and Théodore Géricault. The Raft of the Medusa: Géricault, Art, and Race. Munich Berlin London New York: Prestel, 2002.

Carpeaux, Jean-Baptiste, Elyse Nelson, Wendy S. Walters, and Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.), eds. Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux’s Why Born Enslaved! Reconsidered. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022.

Costello, Leo. J.M.W. Turner and the Subject of History. Farnham Burlington (Vt.): Ashgate, 2012.

McCoubrey, John. “Turner’s Slave Ship : Abolition, Ruskin, and Reception.” Word & Image 14, no. 4 (1998): 319–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/02666286.1998.10443961.

Sayre, Henry M. Value in Art: Manet and the Slave Trade. Chicago London: The University of Chicago Press, 2022.

Abolitionism and 19th Century American Art

Barringer, Tim, Barbara Dayer Gallati, Sophie Lynford, Mark DeSaussure Mitchell, Janice Simon, and Diane Waggoner. The American Pre-Raphaelites: Radical Realists. Edited by Linda S. Ferber and Nancy K. Anderson. Washington, D.C: National Gallery of Art, 2019.

Cobb, Jasmine Nichole. Picture Freedom: Remaking Black Visuality in the Early Nineteenth Century. America and the Long 19th Century. New York London: New York University Press, 2015. 

Goddu, Teresa A. Selling Antislavery: Abolition and Mass Media in Antebellum America. 1st ed. Material Texts. Philadelphia (Pa.): University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020.

Harvey, Eleanor Jones. The Civil War and American Art: Exhibition, Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., from November 16, 2012 through April 28, 2013, and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, from May 21-September 2, 2013. Washington, D.C. New Haven, Connecticut: Smithsonian american art museum in association with Yale university press, 2012.

McInnis, Maurie Dee. Slaves Waiting for Sale: Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

Derleth, Jessica. Women Sculptors and the Antislavery and Woman’s Rights Movements. Ed. Rebecca Jo Plant et al. Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street, 2014.

Slavery and Abolitionism in Contemporary Art, Film, and Popular Culture

Bey, Dawoud et al. Dawoud Bey : Two American Projects. San Francisco, California: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2020.

Downey, Anthony. “Grub For Sharks: A Concession for the Negro Populace.” Third Text 19 no. 2 (2005): 203–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/0952882042000328133.

Hampton, Gregory Jerome. Imagining Slaves and Robots in Literature, Film, and Popular Culture: Reinventing Yesterday’s Slave with Tomorrow’s Robot. Lanham Boulder New York London: Lexington Books, 2015.

Woolfork, Lisa. Embodying American Slavery in Contemporary Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009. 

Contemporary Abolitionism, Prisons, and Art

Bliss, Sharon, and Kevin Chen, eds.. Prison/Culture. San Francisco, Calif: City Lights, 2009.

Fleetwood, Nicole R. Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2020.

Hartnett, Stephen John, ed. Challenging the Prison-Industrial Complex: Activism, Arts, and Educational Alternatives. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 2011.

Representations of Slavery and Emancipation in Public Monuments

Araujo, Ana Lucia. Politics of Memory: Making Slavery Visible in the Public Space. Routledge Studies in Cultural History 17. New York: Routledge, 2012.

Bernier, Celeste-Marie, and Judie Newman. Public Art, Memorials and Atlantic Slavery. London: Routledge, 2009.

Savage, Kirk. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America. Princeton (N. J.): Princeton University Press, 2018.

Displaying Slavery and Abolitionism in Museums

Golding, Vivien, and Wayne Modest, eds. Museums and Communities: Curators, Collections and Collaboration. London ; New York: Bloomsbury, 2013.

Hamilton, Douglas J., and Robert J. Blyth, eds. Representing Slavery: Art, Artefacts and Archives in the Collections of the National Maritime Museum. Aldershot [England] ; Burlington, VT : London: Lund Humphries ; In association with the National Maritime Museum, 2007.

Smith, Laurajane, and Geoffrey Cubitt, eds. Representing Enslavement and Abolition in Museums: Ambiguous Engagements. Routledge Research in Museum Studies 3. New York, NY: Routledge, 2011.

Angela Davis, Abolitionism, and Art

Mead, Rebecca. “Behind Bars.” New Yorker, October 18th, 2010. www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/25/behind-bars-rebecca-mead

Moore, Alexandra, and Rachel Nelson. “Barring Freedom: Art, Abolition and the Museum in Pandemic Times.” Journal of Curatorial Studies 11, no. 1 (2022): 52–71. https://doi.org/10.1386/jcs_00055_1.

VanDiver, Rebecca. “Woman’s Art Journal.” Angela Davis: Seize the Time 42, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2021): 60–62.

Theatre and Contemporary Prison Abolition: Prisons on Stage, Stages in Prison
Compiled by Deana Nichols, Ph.D.

Prisons on Stage: Plays Featuring Incarcerated or Formerly Incarcerated Characters

Alfaro, Luis. Oedipus El Rey. The Greek Trilogy of Luis Alfaro: Electricidad; Oedipus El Rey; Mojada, edited by Rosa Andújar. London, UK ; Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2021. Print.

Behan, Brendan. The Quare Fellow; a Comedy-Drama. New York: Grove Press, 1956. Print.

Blank, Jessica, and Erik Jensen. The Exonerated: A Play. 1st ed. New York: Faber and Faber, 2004. Print.

Bruce, Deborah, et al. Joanne. London: Nick Hern Books, 2015. Print.

Crow, E. V. Doris Day. Charged: Six Plays. London: Nick Hern Books, 2010. Print.

Fugard, Athol, et al. The Island. Sizwe Bansi Is Dead; and, the Island. New York: Viking Press, 1976. Print.

Gooch, Steve. Female Transport. New York: S. French, 1990. Print.

Graham, Bruce. Coyote on a Fence. New York: Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 2000. Print.

Guirgis, Stephen Adly. Jesus Hopped the “A” Train. London: Methuen, 2002. Print.

Gupta, Tanika. Gladiator Games. London: Oberon, 2005. Print.

Harris, Zinnie. Nightingale and Chase. London; Faber and Faber, 2001. Print.

Herbert, John. Fortune and Men’s Eyes. New York: Grove Press, 1967. Print.

Holcroft, Sam. Dancing Bears. Charged: Six Plays. London: Nick Hern Books, 2010. Print.

Killebrew, Boo. Lettie. New York, NY: Samuel French, an imprint of Concord Theatricals, 2020. Print.

Lenkiewicz, Rebecca. That Most Unnameable Lust. Charged: Six Plays. London: Nick Hern Books, 2010. Print.

McCraney, Tarell Alvin. The Brothers Size. The Brother/Sister Plays. 1st ed. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2010. Print.

Miyagawa, Chiori. Broken Morning: Stories from the Death Row Factory. Thousand Years Waiting, and Other Plays. London: Seagull, 2012. Print.

Moss, Chloë. Fatal Light. Charged: Six Plays. London: Nick Hern Books, 2010. Print.

Moss, Chloë. This Wide Night. London: Nick Hern Books, 2008. Print.

Munro, Rona. Iron. Rev. ed. London: Nick Hern Books, 2003. Print.

New Jersey Prison Theater Cooperative. Caged. Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books, 2020. Print.

Norman, Marsha. Getting Out. New York: Avon Books, 1980. Print.

Nottage, Lynn. Clyde’s. New York, NY: Dramatists Play Service Inc., 2022. Print.

Piñero, Miguel. Short Eyes: A Play. New York: Noonday Press, 1975. Print.

Pinnock, Winsome. Taken. Charged: Six Plays. London: Nick Hern Books, 2010. Print.

Prichard, Rebecca. Dream Pill. Charged: Six Plays. London: Nick Hern Books, 2010. Print.

Smith, Anna Deavere. Notes from the Field. New York: Anchor Books, a division of Penguin Random House, 2019. Print.

Tyelele, Motshabi. Shwele Bawo! At This Stage: Plays from Post-Apartheid South Africa, edited by Greg Homann. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2009. Print.

Wallace, Naomi. And I and Silence. London: Faber and Faber, 2011. Print.

Wertenbaker, Timberlake. Our Country’s Good. Plays. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. Print.

Williams, Tennessee. Not about Nightingales. New York: Samuel French, 1999. Print.

Stages in Prison: Resources on Theatre in Prison

Balfour, Michael. Theatre in Prison: Theory and Practice. Portland, OR: Intellect, 2004. Print.

Balfour, Michael et al., eds. Performing Arts in Prisons: Creative Perspectives. Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2019. Print.

Bates, Laura. Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard. Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks, 2013. Print.

Biggs, Lisa. The Healing Stage: Black Women, Incarceration, and the Art of Transformation. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2022. Print.

Dinesh, Nandita. Scripting Detention: A Project in Theater and Autoethnography with Incarcerated Teens. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2017. Print.

Fraden, Rena. Imagining Medea: Rhodessa Jones & Theater for Incarcerated Women. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Print.

A Great Big Story. The Bard behind Bars. Atlanta, GA: CNN Newsource Sales, 2017. Film.

Prentki, Tim., and Sheila Preston. The Applied Theatre Reader. New York: Routledge, 2009. Print.

Heaven, Simon., and Saul. Hewish. Behind The Mask. London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 2013. Film.

Herold, Niels. Prison Shakespeare and the Purpose of Performance: Repentance Rituals and the Early Modern. First edition. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Print.

McAvinchey, Caoimhe. Theatre & Prison. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Print.

Moller, Lorraine. “A Day in the Life of a Prison Theatre Program.” TDR (1988-), vol. 47, no. 1, 2003, pp. 49–73. Web. https://doi.org/10.1162/105420403321249992. 

Pensalfini, Rob. Prison Shakespeare: For These Deep Shames and Great Indignities. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Print.

Redman, Beverly. “The Graterford Prison Project: Negotiating Change.” Journal of arts and communities 1.3 (2011): 279–288. Web. https://doi.org/10.1386/jaac.1.3.279_7. 

Rogerson, Hank., Jilann. Spitzmiller, and William Shakespeare. Shakespeare behind Bars. DVD format. Los Angeles, CA: Shout! Factory, 2006. Film.

Scott-Douglass, Amy. Shakespeare Inside: The Bard behind Bars. London ; Continuum, 2007. Print.

Shailor, Jonathan, ed. Performing New Lives: Prison Theatre. London ; Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2011. Print.

Snowsill, Tony., and Tracy. Friesen. Criminal Acts inside Prison Theatre. Montreal, Que: National Film Board of Canada, 2005. Film.

Telesco, Grace. “Theater of the Recruits.” Theater (New Haven, Conn.) 31.3 (2001): 55–61. Web. https://doi.org/10.1215/01610775-31-3-55-a. 

Thompson, James. Applied Theatre: Bewilderment and Beyond. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2012. Print.

Thompson, James. Prison Theatre: Perspectives and Practices. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1998. Print.

Trounstine, Jean R. Shakespeare behind Bars: One Teacher’s Story of the Power of Drama in a Women’s Prison. Ann Arbor, Mich: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Print.

Walsh, Aylwyn. Prison Cultures: Performance, Resistance, Desire. Bristol: Intellect, 2019. Print.

Winn, Maisha T. Girl Time: Literacy, Justice, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline. New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 2011. Print.

Woodland, Sarah. “Prison Theatre and an Embodied Aesthetics of Liberation: Exploring the Potentials and Limits.” Humanities (Basel) 10.3 (2021): 101-. Web. https://doi.org/10.3390/h10030101.