Nolan Bennett is an Assistant Professor of
Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Green
Bay. He is a scholar of American political thought, and his
research considers why and to what effect historical actors and
movements ground their claims for democratic justice in personal
experience. He recovers genres like autobiography, slave narrative,
and prison writing as appeals to popular authority and
representation not found in state or electoral politics. Nolan is
particularly interested in issues of prison reform and punishment
in the United States, inspired by the long history of prison
writing, and with a committed interest to teaching in carceral
spaces.
"Autobiography is central to galvanizing democratic action, Nolan
Bennett argues in this important and timely book. Life writing
allows authors to seize the authority to make their lives
politically meaningful, while encouraging readers to connect their
own experiences to visions of equality and justice. Engaging some
of the most interesting writers in American political history, this
beautiful book reminds us of the power of personal storytelling for
crafting vibrant democratic futures." -- Elisabeth R. Anker, author
of Orgies of Feeling: Melodrama and the Politics of Freedom
"The Claims of Experience is a beautiful, innovative book. Through
vivid studies of autobiographies by revered and reviled figures
from US history, Nolan Bennett captures the relationship between
life writing and democratic thinking. Bennett's book not only
reveals the political value of autobiography, but it also pursues
Richard Wright's dream of building 'a bridge of words' between the
stories of five remarkable lives and the possibilities for freer
and more humane forms of coexistence." -- Lawrie Balfour, author of
Democracy's Reconstruction: Thinking Politically with W. E. B. Du
Bois
"Nolan Bennett's fine study adds a vitally important dimension to
our understanding of autobiography and its uses. Heretofore, we
have approached this genre mainly for insights into personal
identity and for vivid testimony about trauma, illness, and
disability. Bennett now shows that autobiographies are also
compelling contributions to an expanded political theory of
democracy, one that gives weight to experience not just ideas, and
to citizens not just institutions." -- Nick Bromell, author of The
Time Is Always Now: Black Thought and the Transformation of US
Democracy
"Nolan Bennett's Claims of Experience is an ambitious and
thought-provoking book that introduces creative new ways to think
about the role of autobiography in democratic politics. Analyzing
how a diverse selection of American thinkers have told their life
stories, it offers strikingly original interpretations of their
political thought, along with fresh insights into their personal
and public lives. It is a book for anyone who cares about how
Americans understand themselves and their politics, not only in the
past but also today." -- Michael Lienesch, University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill
"Nolan Bennett's The Claims of Experience is a remarkable book.
Bennett recovers the role of personal narrative as a resource for
political thought and democratic politics in a series of
provocative and original readings of autobiographical texts. It
offers keen insights in an engaging prose. This is an important and
original contribution to political theory." -- Simon Stow, The
College of William and Mary
"Autobiography creates community. This is the bold, paradoxical
claim that Nolan Bennett explores in this magnificent history of
life writing in U.S. political thought. Bennett sheds new light on
classic autobiographers, Benjamin Franklin and Frederick Douglass,
while disclosing the intellectual riches of the relatively
neglected Henry Adams, Emma Goldman, and Whittaker Chambers. This
careful, thorough book will have a long shelf life as an
alternative history of American political thought." -- Jack Turner,
author of Awakening to Race: Individualism and Social Consciousness
in America
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