{"id":{"repo_id":"buffalo","oai_identifier":"oai:ubir.buffalo.edu:10477/80920"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/buffalo/oai:ubir.buffalo.edu:10477/80920","repository":{"repo_id":"buffalo","name":"Buffalo","base_url":"https://ubir.buffalo.edu/oai/request"},"display":{"title":"Imagined Cemeteries: Mortuary Rituals, Racial Terror, and the American Literary Canon","abstract":"Ph.D.","abstract_html":"Ph.D.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Cosimini, Seth; 0000-0002-7703-0780"],"institution":"State University of New York at Buffalo","degree_name":null,"degree_level":null,"degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Young, Hershini","English"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2019,"date_issued":"2019-10-29T16:48:10Z","date_published":"2019-10-29T16:48:10Z","updated_at":"2026-07-27T19:05:25Z","subjects":["American literature","American studies","Black studies"],"languages":["eng"],"rights":["Users of works found in University at Buffalo Institutional Repository (UBIR) are responsible for identifying and contacting the copyright owner for permission to reuse. University at Buffalo Libraries do not manage rights for copyright-protected works and cannot assist with permissions.","Copyright retained by author."],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/10477/80920","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Young, Hershini","English"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Cosimini, Seth; 0000-0002-7703-0780"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2019-10-29T16:48:10Z","2019","2019-08-08 14:46:08"]},{"key":"dc:publisher","label":"Institution","values":["State University of New York at Buffalo"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["Text","Dissertation"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["American literature","American studies","Black studies"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["eng"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Users of works found in University at Buffalo Institutional Repository (UBIR) are responsible for identifying and contacting the copyright owner for permission to reuse. University at Buffalo Libraries do not manage rights for copyright-protected works and cannot assist with permissions.","Copyright retained by author."]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/10477/80920"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["Ph.D.","“Imagined Cemeteries: Mortuary Rituals, Racial Terror, and the American Literary Canon” examines literary representations of mortuary rituals—broadly understood as including everything from burial rites to the enforcement of social death—in American literature. Through this attention to literary mortuary rituals, my dissertation unpacks the ways in which the violence of racism is transformed into the national-popular imagination of the United States. Works central and peripheral to the American literary canon are pervaded by representations of death and its attendant rituals, and these representations are often closely accompanied by engagements with race and racism, most especially anti-black violence. To better understand this national literary legacy, this project takes up post-Civil Rights Movement literature and thought of the African diaspora, with a particular emphasis on black feminist thought and fiction, to reexamine such representations of death, ritual, and violence in major works of the nineteenth-century U.S.-American literary canon. In so doing, the project not only expands Toni Morrison’s project of uncovering the “Africanist” presence in the American literary imagination, but also brings new perspectives to debates on temporality and periodization in the study of nineteenth-century American literature. Focusing our critical attention on histories and representations of racial terror and ritual death necessarily requires reexamining the relationship between violence, imagination, and time in the Americas—questions that pervade the history and prehistory of Black Studies—in order to bring new ways of thinking to bear on our critical historical and periodized approaches to the American literary canon."]},{"key":"dc:format","label":"Dc Format","values":["application/pdf"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Imagined Cemeteries: Mortuary Rituals, Racial Terror, and the American Literary Canon"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Young, Hershini","English"],"dc:creator":["Cosimini, Seth; 0000-0002-7703-0780"],"dc:date":["2019-10-29T16:48:10Z","2019","2019-08-08 14:46:08"],"dc:description":["Ph.D.","“Imagined Cemeteries: Mortuary Rituals, Racial Terror, and the American Literary Canon” examines literary representations of mortuary rituals—broadly understood as including everything from burial rites to the enforcement of social death—in American literature. Through this attention to literary mortuary rituals, my dissertation unpacks the ways in which the violence of racism is transformed into the national-popular imagination of the United States. Works central and peripheral to the American literary canon are pervaded by representations of death and its attendant rituals, and these representations are often closely accompanied by engagements with race and racism, most especially anti-black violence. To better understand this national literary legacy, this project takes up post-Civil Rights Movement literature and thought of the African diaspora, with a particular emphasis on black feminist thought and fiction, to reexamine such representations of death, ritual, and violence in major works of the nineteenth-century U.S.-American literary canon. In so doing, the project not only expands Toni Morrison’s project of uncovering the “Africanist” presence in the American literary imagination, but also brings new perspectives to debates on temporality and periodization in the study of nineteenth-century American literature. Focusing our critical attention on histories and representations of racial terror and ritual death necessarily requires reexamining the relationship between violence, imagination, and time in the Americas—questions that pervade the history and prehistory of Black Studies—in order to bring new ways of thinking to bear on our critical historical and periodized approaches to the American literary canon."],"dc:format":["application/pdf"],"dc:identifier":["http://hdl.handle.net/10477/80920"],"dc:language":["eng"],"dc:publisher":["State University of New York at Buffalo"],"dc:rights":["Users of works found in University at Buffalo Institutional Repository (UBIR) are responsible for identifying and contacting the copyright owner for permission to reuse. University at Buffalo Libraries do not manage rights for copyright-protected works and cannot assist with permissions.","Copyright retained by author."],"dc:subject":["American literature","American studies","Black studies"],"dc:title":["Imagined Cemeteries: Mortuary Rituals, Racial Terror, and the American Literary Canon"],"dc:type":["Text","Dissertation"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-27T19:05:25Z"}