African American literature in transition ; 5: African American literature in transition 1865 1880 : black reconstructions This volume offers the most nuanced treatment available of Black engagement with print in the transitional years after the Civil War. It locates and studies materials that many literary historians leave out of narratives of American culture. But as important as such recovery work is African American Literature in Transition 1865 1880 also emphasizes innovative approaches recognizing that such recovery inherently challenges methods dominant in American literary study. At the books core is the recognition that many period texts by writers from Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and William Wells Brown to Mattie Jackson and William Steward are not only aesthetically striking but also central to understanding key socio historical and cultural trends in the nineteenth century. Chapters by leading scholars are grouped in three sections Citizenships Textualities and Domesticities Persons and Bodies and Memories Materialities and Locations and focus on debates over race nation personhood and print that were central to Reconstruction