Review

“A remarkable, almost epic book. Up from slavery and up from Slavdom: Dale Peterson focuses on comparable moments in the coming-to-consciousness of two ‘dark continents,’ the African and the Russian, where the stubborn fact of bondage for the many, a rich and conflicted dual identity for the educated few, and routine exclusion from the European mainstream as ‘non-historical peoples’ motivated a sophisticated intellectual odyssey that astonishes us afresh each time we rediscover it. Up From Bondage is an inspiration.”—Caryl Emerson, Princeton University

“Navigating the endless bounty of intellectual lapses and possibilities that reside in the gap between the West (qua ‘philosophy’) and the Rest (as barbaros, or racialized ‘outcasts’), Professor Peterson finds an accommodating comparative channel in similarities between African American and Slavic forms of intellectual, missionary, and cultural nationalisms. The result is one of those books one remembers as uncannily important, yoking together seemingly incompatible regions in interesting ways.”—Houston Baker, Duke University

About the Author

Dale E. Peterson is Professor of English and Russian at Amherst College and Associate Editor of the Massachusetts Review.