Nancy Prince: A Black American Working-Class Woman among the Russian Nobility

Join us for the last 19v seminar this semester!  The event is online only. Register for Zoom.

In this 19v seminar, Katharina Wiedlack closely analyzes A Narrative of the Life and Travels of Mrs. Nancy Prince. Written by Herself. The autobiography, first published in 1850, details parts of Nancy Prince’s life, her roots within the Black working class, her extensive visits to Russia and Jamaica, and her abolitionist activism. Prince's autobiography is exceptional. The travel narrative form was reserved for the many white male and fewer white female travelers of the mid-19th century. Few free Black women published autobiographies then, and Prince's is a rare surviving one. By conducting a literary analysis of Prince's narrative from a feminist, anti-racist, and disability perspective, and by contextualizing her findings within the respective racial and gendered historical national discourses of the U.S., Russia, and Jamaica, Wiedlack is interested in how Prince shaped her positionality as a free Black working woman through her Russian encounters. Arguing that Prince conceptualized a form of transnational solidarity and put it into practice, Wiedlack will look closely at Prince's observations and the ethical and philosophical conclusions she drew from her engagements, as well as from observing the political turmoil of early nineteenth-century Russia, the Decembrist Revolt, and its violent counterinsurgency.

Speaker: Katharina Wiedlack (University of Vienna, currently visiting scholar at NYU)

Discussant: Anne Lounsbery (New York University)