Martha J Cutter
Biographic Data
| ID | 1093259 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Martha J Cutter |
| GIVEN NAMES | Martha J |
| FAMILY NAME | Cutter |
| SIGNATURE | CUTTER M J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Connecticut |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 3 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Criminal Genius in African American and US Literature, 1793-1845. Erin Forbes
Re-Producing the Meaning of the Geography of Enslavement: Henry Box Brown’s Subversive Geographical Resistance
Honoring the Legacy of Jean Fagan Yellin (1930-2023)
Perhaps more than any other scholar of her generation
When Black Lives Really Do Matter: Subverting Medical Racism through African-Diasporic Healing Rituals in Toni Morrison’s Fiction
Toni Morrison spent much of her career detailing the unpredictability of African American existence within a racist society, with a special focus on patriarchal violence and medical apartheid against women’s bodies. Yet Morrison also limns out alternative modes of healing within a Black metacultural framework that moves between Nigeria, Brazil, and Egypt. As we move forward from the COVID-19 crisis, research has suggested that training more Afric…
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval. Saidiya Hartman
Saidiya Hartman’s gorgeously written new book, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval, accomplishes what too few academic books manage to do: it provides incisive information about African American women in the early twentieth century whose lives were bold experiments in living while also being moving, haunting, and provocative. The individuals discussed have not been endowed with the authority of historical a…
Performing Fugitivity: Henry Box Brown on the Nineteenth-Century British Stage
Henry Box Brown was a fugitive US slave who, in 1849, mailed himself from slavery in Virginia to freedom in Philadelphia in a large postal crate. Brown survived and went on to perform panoramas of his experience and stage shows involving magic, mesmerism (hypnosis), phrenology, and even dark séances in the US, the UK, and Canada. In 1857 in England, he also acted in semi-autobiographical plays written specifically for him by the minor British pla…
The Fugitive Gazes Back: The Photographic Performance Work of Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth
Invisibilization has been theorized as a mode of disempowerment, yet for African Americans who have been hypervisualized it can become a locus of social or visual power. This article examines photographic portraits of Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth to show how they perform versions of their identities. Via curation of objects, expressions, and slogans within the photographic mise-en-scène, Douglass and Truth create a visual avatar, while …
Artistic Liberties: American Literary Realism and Graphic Illustration, 1880–1905Immersive Words: Mass Media, Visuality, and American Literature, 1839–1893
When Harriet Beecher Stowe writes in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) that because Tom is “the hero of our story, we must daguerreotype [him] for our readers” (ch. 4) and describes Marie St. Clare looking with a “dissatisfied air” at a “daguerreotype, clear and soft as an engraving, representing Eva and her father sitting hand in hand” (ch. 15), she nods to the evident fact that by the mid-nineteenth century new visual technologies of all kinds had proli…
The Illustrated Slave: Empathy, Graphic Narrative, and the Visual Culture of the Transatlantic Abolition Movement, 1800–1852
Picture Freedom: Remaking Black Visuality in the Early Nineteenth Century. Jasmine Nichole Cobb
In the vast archive of visual materials created by both pro- and antislavery forces prior to the invention of the daguerreotype in 1839, progressive depictions of free African Americans are relatively rare, as Jasmine Nichole Cobb points out in her fascinating new study. Moreover, when free African Americans were pictured, these illustrations tended to mock and satirize the supposed strivings of blacks to attain social status or their purported h…
Multi-Ethnic "Literature" of the "United States: Thinking Beyond the Borders
Journal Article Multi-Ethnic “Literature” of the “United States”: Thinking Beyond the Borders Get access Martha J. Cutter Martha J. Cutter University of Connecticut Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar MELUS, Volume 40, Issue 1, Spring 2015, Pages 13–17, https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlu086 Published: 13 March 2015
Emergent U.S. Literatures: From Multiculturalism to Cosmopolitanism in the Late Twentieth Century. Cyrus R. K. Patell
Toward the end of Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker (1995), the protagonist muses: I love these streets lined with big American sedans and livery cars and vans... . I love how the Spanish disco thumps out from windows... . I follow the strolling Saturday families of brightly wrapped Hindus and then the black-clad Hasidim, and step into all the old churches that were once German and then Korean and are now Vietnamese. And I love the brief Queens sunl…
Revising Torture: Moses Roper and the Visual Rhetoric of the Slave’s Body in the Transatlantic Abolition Movement
Revising Torture:Moses Roper and the Visual Rhetoric of the Slave’s Body in the Transatlantic Abolition Movement Martha J. Cutter (bio) Torture endeavors to dehumanize and render powerless its subjects; it also intends to shred human dignity and condense a person to a body in pain, or even to an animal that cannot articulate its torment. As Elaine Scarry has famously observed, physical pain habitually entails a "shattering of language" as the tor…
Ethnic Modernism (review)
Journal Article Ethnic Modernism. Werner Sollors. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2008. 324 pages. $18.95 paper. Get access Ethnic Modernism. Werner Sollors. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2008. 324 pages. $18.95 paper. Martha J. Cutter Martha J. Cutter University of Connecticut Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar MELUS, Volume 34, Issue 3, September 2009, Pages 224–227, https:…
Rereading the Harlem Renaissance: Race, Class, and Gender in the Fiction of Jessie Fauset, Zora Neale Hurston, and Dorothy West
Introduction Deconstructing the Black Bourgeoisie: Subversions and Diversions in the Fiction of Jessie Fauset How It Feels to Be Colored Me: Social Protest in the Fiction of Zora Neale Hurston A Closet Revolutionary: The Politics of Representation in the Fiction of Dorothy West Conclusion Selected Bibliography Index
Empire and the Mind of the Child: "Sui Sin Far's "Tales of Chinese Children
Empire and the Mind of the Child: Sui Sin Far’s “Tales of Chinese Children” Get access Martha J. Cutter Martha J. Cutter Kent State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar MELUS, Volume 27, Issue 2, March 2002, Pages 31–48, https://doi.org/10.2307/3250600 Published: 01 March 2002
The Writer as Doctor: New Models of Medical Discourse in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Later Fiction
When Charlotte Perkins Gilman was suffering from the postpartum depression that eventually became the impetus for "The Yellow Wall-Paper" (1892), she took extensive notes about her symptoms. 1 However, when she sent a letter describing her symptoms to the famous Victorian nerve specialist S. Weir Mitchell, he claimed it "only proved self-conceit" and promptly condemned her to the rest cure, which expressly prohibited women from reading and writin…
Quiet as It's Kept: Shame, Trauma, and Race in the Novels of Toni Morrison
Philomela Speaks: Alice Walker's Revisioning of Rape Archetypes in The Color Purple
Philomela Speaks: Alice Walker's Revisioning of Rape Archetypes in The Color Purple Get access Martha J. Cutter Martha J. Cutter Kent State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar MELUS, Volume 25, Issue 3-4, Fall/Winter 2000, Pages 161–180, https://doi.org/10.2307/468241 Published: 01 September 2000
The Story Must Go on and on: The Fantastic, Narration, and Intertextuality in Toni Morrison's Beloved and Jazz
A fixed law, an established rule: that is what immobilizes narrative. (Todorov 165) Rereading [is] an operation contrary to the commercial and ideological habits of our society, which would have us throw away the story once it has been consumed (devoured) .[ldots] [Rereading] is tolerated only in certain marginal categories of readers (children, old people, and professors) .[ldots] (Barthes 15-16) Narratives, it seems, move toward closure. This i…
"Dismantling "The Master's House: Critical Literacy in Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Callaloo - Volume 19, Number 1, Winter 1996
Zitkala-Sa's Autobiographical Writings: The Problems of a Canonical Search for Language and Identity
A recent edition of The Norton Anthology of American Literature includes Zitkala-Sa's (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin 1876-1938) autobiographical writing, while commenting that it satisfies none of the conventional expectations of male autobiographies (typically narratives of triumphs of the will) or of female autobiographies (typically narratives of victories of love and domesticity) (II, 864). Having canonized Zitkala-Sa, a Native American (Sioux) wom…
Fragmentation and Unification, Myth and Metaphor
Beyond stereotypes: Mary Wilkins Freeman's radical critique of nineteenth‐century cults of femininity
Frontiers of Language: "Engendering Discourse in "The Revolt of 'Mother
When Black Lives Really Do Matter: Subverting Medical Racism through African-Diasporic Healing Rituals in Toni Morrison’s Fiction
Toni Morrison spent much of her career detailing the unpredictability of African American existence within a racist society, with a special focus on patriarchal violence and medical apartheid against women’s bodies. Yet Morrison also limns out alternative modes of healing within a Black metacultural framework that moves between Nigeria, Brazil, and Egypt. As we move forward from the COVID-19 crisis, research has suggested that training more Afric…
Empire and the Mind of the Child: "Sui Sin Far's "Tales of Chinese Children
Empire and the Mind of the Child: Sui Sin Far’s “Tales of Chinese Children” Get access Martha J. Cutter Martha J. Cutter Kent State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar MELUS, Volume 27, Issue 2, March 2002, Pages 31–48, https://doi.org/10.2307/3250600 Published: 01 March 2002
"Dismantling "The Master's House: Critical Literacy in Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Callaloo - Volume 19, Number 1, Winter 1996
Frontiers of Language: "Engendering Discourse in "The Revolt of 'Mother
Beyond stereotypes: Mary Wilkins Freeman's radical critique of nineteenth‐century cults of femininity
Zitkala-Sa's Autobiographical Writings: The Problems of a Canonical Search for Language and Identity
A recent edition of The Norton Anthology of American Literature includes Zitkala-Sa's (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin 1876-1938) autobiographical writing, while commenting that it satisfies none of the conventional expectations of male autobiographies (typically narratives of triumphs of the will) or of female autobiographies (typically narratives of victories of love and domesticity) (II, 864). Having canonized Zitkala-Sa, a Native American (Sioux) wom…
Fragmentation and Unification, Myth and Metaphor
"Dismantling "The Master's House: Critical Literacy in Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Callaloo - Volume 19, Number 1, Winter 1996
Philomela Speaks: Alice Walker's Revisioning of Rape Archetypes in The Color Purple
Philomela Speaks: Alice Walker's Revisioning of Rape Archetypes in The Color Purple Get access Martha J. Cutter Martha J. Cutter Kent State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar MELUS, Volume 25, Issue 3-4, Fall/Winter 2000, Pages 161–180, https://doi.org/10.2307/468241 Published: 01 September 2000
The Story Must Go on and on: The Fantastic, Narration, and Intertextuality in Toni Morrison's Beloved and Jazz
A fixed law, an established rule: that is what immobilizes narrative. (Todorov 165) Rereading [is] an operation contrary to the commercial and ideological habits of our society, which would have us throw away the story once it has been consumed (devoured) .[ldots] [Rereading] is tolerated only in certain marginal categories of readers (children, old people, and professors) .[ldots] (Barthes 15-16) Narratives, it seems, move toward closure. This i…
The Writer as Doctor: New Models of Medical Discourse in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Later Fiction
When Charlotte Perkins Gilman was suffering from the postpartum depression that eventually became the impetus for "The Yellow Wall-Paper" (1892), she took extensive notes about her symptoms. 1 However, when she sent a letter describing her symptoms to the famous Victorian nerve specialist S. Weir Mitchell, he claimed it "only proved self-conceit" and promptly condemned her to the rest cure, which expressly prohibited women from reading and writin…
Quiet as It's Kept: Shame, Trauma, and Race in the Novels of Toni Morrison
Empire and the Mind of the Child: "Sui Sin Far's "Tales of Chinese Children
Empire and the Mind of the Child: Sui Sin Far’s “Tales of Chinese Children” Get access Martha J. Cutter Martha J. Cutter Kent State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar MELUS, Volume 27, Issue 2, March 2002, Pages 31–48, https://doi.org/10.2307/3250600 Published: 01 March 2002
Rereading the Harlem Renaissance: Race, Class, and Gender in the Fiction of Jessie Fauset, Zora Neale Hurston, and Dorothy West
Introduction Deconstructing the Black Bourgeoisie: Subversions and Diversions in the Fiction of Jessie Fauset How It Feels to Be Colored Me: Social Protest in the Fiction of Zora Neale Hurston A Closet Revolutionary: The Politics of Representation in the Fiction of Dorothy West Conclusion Selected Bibliography Index
Ethnic Modernism (review)
Journal Article Ethnic Modernism. Werner Sollors. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2008. 324 pages. $18.95 paper. Get access Ethnic Modernism. Werner Sollors. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2008. 324 pages. $18.95 paper. Martha J. Cutter Martha J. Cutter University of Connecticut Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar MELUS, Volume 34, Issue 3, September 2009, Pages 224–227, https:…
Revising Torture: Moses Roper and the Visual Rhetoric of the Slave’s Body in the Transatlantic Abolition Movement
Revising Torture:Moses Roper and the Visual Rhetoric of the Slave’s Body in the Transatlantic Abolition Movement Martha J. Cutter (bio) Torture endeavors to dehumanize and render powerless its subjects; it also intends to shred human dignity and condense a person to a body in pain, or even to an animal that cannot articulate its torment. As Elaine Scarry has famously observed, physical pain habitually entails a "shattering of language" as the tor…
Multi-Ethnic "Literature" of the "United States: Thinking Beyond the Borders
Journal Article Multi-Ethnic “Literature” of the “United States”: Thinking Beyond the Borders Get access Martha J. Cutter Martha J. Cutter University of Connecticut Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar MELUS, Volume 40, Issue 1, Spring 2015, Pages 13–17, https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlu086 Published: 13 March 2015
Emergent U.S. Literatures: From Multiculturalism to Cosmopolitanism in the Late Twentieth Century. Cyrus R. K. Patell
Toward the end of Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker (1995), the protagonist muses: I love these streets lined with big American sedans and livery cars and vans... . I love how the Spanish disco thumps out from windows... . I follow the strolling Saturday families of brightly wrapped Hindus and then the black-clad Hasidim, and step into all the old churches that were once German and then Korean and are now Vietnamese. And I love the brief Queens sunl…
Picture Freedom: Remaking Black Visuality in the Early Nineteenth Century. Jasmine Nichole Cobb
In the vast archive of visual materials created by both pro- and antislavery forces prior to the invention of the daguerreotype in 1839, progressive depictions of free African Americans are relatively rare, as Jasmine Nichole Cobb points out in her fascinating new study. Moreover, when free African Americans were pictured, these illustrations tended to mock and satirize the supposed strivings of blacks to attain social status or their purported h…
The Illustrated Slave: Empathy, Graphic Narrative, and the Visual Culture of the Transatlantic Abolition Movement, 1800–1852
Artistic Liberties: American Literary Realism and Graphic Illustration, 1880–1905Immersive Words: Mass Media, Visuality, and American Literature, 1839–1893
When Harriet Beecher Stowe writes in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) that because Tom is “the hero of our story, we must daguerreotype [him] for our readers” (ch. 4) and describes Marie St. Clare looking with a “dissatisfied air” at a “daguerreotype, clear and soft as an engraving, representing Eva and her father sitting hand in hand” (ch. 15), she nods to the evident fact that by the mid-nineteenth century new visual technologies of all kinds had proli…
The Fugitive Gazes Back: The Photographic Performance Work of Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth
Invisibilization has been theorized as a mode of disempowerment, yet for African Americans who have been hypervisualized it can become a locus of social or visual power. This article examines photographic portraits of Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth to show how they perform versions of their identities. Via curation of objects, expressions, and slogans within the photographic mise-en-scène, Douglass and Truth create a visual avatar, while …
When Black Lives Really Do Matter: Subverting Medical Racism through African-Diasporic Healing Rituals in Toni Morrison’s Fiction
Toni Morrison spent much of her career detailing the unpredictability of African American existence within a racist society, with a special focus on patriarchal violence and medical apartheid against women’s bodies. Yet Morrison also limns out alternative modes of healing within a Black metacultural framework that moves between Nigeria, Brazil, and Egypt. As we move forward from the COVID-19 crisis, research has suggested that training more Afric…
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval. Saidiya Hartman
Saidiya Hartman’s gorgeously written new book, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval, accomplishes what too few academic books manage to do: it provides incisive information about African American women in the early twentieth century whose lives were bold experiments in living while also being moving, haunting, and provocative. The individuals discussed have not been endowed with the authority of historical a…
Performing Fugitivity: Henry Box Brown on the Nineteenth-Century British Stage
Henry Box Brown was a fugitive US slave who, in 1849, mailed himself from slavery in Virginia to freedom in Philadelphia in a large postal crate. Brown survived and went on to perform panoramas of his experience and stage shows involving magic, mesmerism (hypnosis), phrenology, and even dark séances in the US, the UK, and Canada. In 1857 in England, he also acted in semi-autobiographical plays written specifically for him by the minor British pla…
Honoring the Legacy of Jean Fagan Yellin (1930-2023)
Perhaps more than any other scholar of her generation
Criminal Genius in African American and US Literature, 1793-1845. Erin Forbes
Re-Producing the Meaning of the Geography of Enslavement: Henry Box Brown’s Subversive Geographical Resistance
Art (18 works) · History (18 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Art history (12 works) · Literature (11 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · History (7 works) · Psychology (7 works)