Pinto, Daysha

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    Slavery and feminist rhetorics: Phillis Wheatley’s construction of communities through her poetry and letters
    (2017) Pinto, Daysha; Lamore, Eric D.; College of Arts and Sciences - Art; Chansky, Ricia A.; Géliga Vargas, Jocelyn A.; Department of English; Boglio Martínez, Rafael
    This thesis explores the intersections of gender, race, rhetoric, life writing, and early black Atlantic literature. I argue that Phillis Wheatley, a literate enslaved woman of African descent, sought to combat the effects of Orlando Patterson’s social death theory through poetry and letter writing. Specifically, my thesis focuses on how Wheatley constructed access to two types of imagined communities: communities of the mind and female communities of care. In chapter one, “Communities of the Mind: Accessing the Past, Visualizing the Future, and Creating Imagined Worlds,” I argue that Wheatley challenges the effects of social death by writing about two specific mental faculties in her poems “On Recollection” and “On Imagination.” In chapter two, “Female Communities Constructed Through Letter Writing,” I argue that Wheatley, through epistolary writing, created important, transatlantic relationships with other women in the Atlantic world. Drawing from Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities and Cynthia Huff’s critique of Anderson’s influential concept elaborated in Life Writing and Imagined Communities, I propose that Wheatley crafted access to female-centered imagined communities of mutual care and support through a shared Judeo-Christian culture.