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cover of episode Nneka D. Dennie, "Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Essential Writings of a Nineteenth Century Black Radical Feminist" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Nneka D. Dennie, "Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Essential Writings of a Nineteenth Century Black Radical Feminist" (Oxford UP, 2023)

2025/5/30
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Narrator
一位专注于电动车和能源领域的播客主持人和内容创作者。
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Nneka D. Dennie
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Sullivan Summer
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Sullivan Summer：我最初是在阅读有关约翰·布朗袭击哈珀斯费里的文章时，得知了奥斯本·安德森与玛丽安·沙德·凯里有联系。虽然我知道她的名字，但我对她了解不多。 Nneka D. Dennie：我在读研究生时偶然发现了沙德·凯里，当时我正在为综合考试做准备。我在准备综合考试时，经常看到她的名字，但没有看到很多关于她的具体内容。我的第二本书意外地变成了我的第一本书，部分原因是沙德·凯里诞辰200周年。沙德·凯里与许多人有联系，比如弗雷德里克·道格拉斯和马丁·德莱尼。我很惊讶没有人把沙德·凯里的主要来源汇编成册，因为她的名字经常出现。

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Dr. Dennie's path to researching Mary Ann Shadd Cary involved encountering her name repeatedly during graduate school while studying 19th and 20th-century Black women's history. This led to her dissertation focusing on six women, including Cary, and ultimately to editing this primary source reader. Cary's name frequently appeared alongside other prominent figures, prompting Dr. Dennie to compile her work.
  • Dr. Nneka D. Dennie's initial encounter with Mary Ann Shadd Cary was during graduate school.
  • Cary's name repeatedly appeared in sources on 19th-century Black women's history.
  • Dr. Dennie's dissertation included Cary as one of its subjects.
  • The 200th anniversary of Cary's birth influenced the decision to prioritize this book.

Shownotes Transcript

In 1849, the Mary Ann Shadd Cary had not yet become one of the first Black woman newspaper editors in North America. She was decades away from being admitted to Howard University’s Law School and becoming the first Black woman to so enroll in the United States. She had not yet begun to lobby for women’s right to vote, and she had not yet emigrated to Canada, where she would rise to prominence as a formidable abolitionist and emigrationist. Though many years would pass before she made a name for herself as a gifted writer, editor, lecturer, educator, lawyer, and suffragist, in 1849, Mary Ann Shadd Cary was already certain of one thing: “We should do more, and talk less.”

Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Essential Writings of a Nineteenth-Century Black Radical Feminist)* *(Oxford Univeristy Press, 2023) includes letters, newspaper articles, organizational records, and never-before-published handwritten notes and essay drafts that illustrate how Shadd Cary participated in major Africana philosophical debates during the nineteenth century. Racial uplift, women’s rights, emigration, citizenship and economic self-determination for Black people in general and Black women in particular, were all subjects of Shadd Cary’s writings and activism throughout her lifetime, shaping Black radical theory and praxis. She is one of many nineteenth-century Black women theorists whose intellectual contributions are often overlooked. By interrogating Shadd Cary’s Black radical ethic of care, this book reveals the philosophies that have shaped Black women's centuries-long struggle for rights and freedom.

Nneka D. Dennie )is Assistant Professor of History, core faculty in Africana Studies, and affiliate faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington and Lee University. She is also co-founder and president of the Black Women’s Studies Association). Dr. Dennie’s research examines Black feminism and Black intellectual thought with an emphasis on nineteenth-century African American women thinkers. Her work has been published in* Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International*; Feminist Studies; Atlantic Studies: Global Currents; The Routledge Companion to Black Women's Social and Cultural Histories; The Oxford Handbook of W.E.B. Du Bois, and more.

You can find the host, Sullivan Summer, online), on Instagram), and at Substack), where she and Dr. Dennie continue their conversation.

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