Femke Fakkeldij holds a Master’s degree in North American Studies from Leiden University.
Femke is interested in examining the politicization of Black literary expression in the antebellum North and studying its relation to experiences of free Black citizenship. She is particularly interested in the role of Black literary societies in cities like Philadelphia, Boston, and New York City, and the texts produced and distributed by these literary societies. Her research will examine the networks in which these societies operated — including, for instance, abolitionist societies, educational organizations, and the Black press — to gain insight into how Black literary societies enabled free Black Americans to participate in civil society. Furthermore, by considering the ways in which membership of Black literary societies can be understood as a form of participation in the body politic, or as a form of resistance against the body politic, this project examines how and to what extent free Black Americans in the antebellum North were able to exercise their political agency through literary societies.
