Peter Reed
Associate Professor of English
Phone Number: (662)915-7685
Email: preed@olemiss.edu

Key Words:

Research Description: Dancing on the Volcano: Haiti and Nineteenth-Century American Literature This project recovers and interprets 18th and 19th century American texts about Haiti, from refugee texts of the 1790s, to the birth of the African American short story in the 1820s, past dramas, novels, and even popular culture like minstrelsy, to finish by considering the literature of the American Renaissance. This project tracks the emergence and transformation of stories from and of Haiti's slave uprising in the 1790s, arguing that Americans used various literary and social representations of Haiti to work out their notions of racial difference, revolutionary politics, freedom and the possibilities of interracial reconciliation up to the US Civil War. The project deals with primary source materials that are sometimes difficult to find and read, but which can reveal surprising and intriguing aspects of America's social life and racial imaginaries.

Honors Theses:

Fieweger, Jack (2021) B'ars and Catamounts: A Study of Davy Crockett through Genre and Medium (full text)